El Progreso – Colombia

The El Progreso farm, located just outside of San Agustin in Huila, Colombia, is owned and operated by Gloria Ortega, a devoted single mother and producer. Gloria is innately familiar with coffee. As a child she was thrusted into a career in coffee picking, working alongside her grandfather, to help support her family. She would work as a coffee picker her whole life up until she purchased El Progreso. Upon first receiving the farm, Gloria found it to be heavily neglected and worked hard to restore it to a usable condition. During the pandemic in 2020, roughly 20 years after first purchasing the farm, Gloria resolved to reinvent El Progreso, changing it from a focus on commodity coffee to specialty coffee. This change involved planting over 2000 new coffee trees and revising the methods and techniques used. Monkaaba, a smallholder coffee grower empowerment initiative based in the nearby city of San Agustin, was able to provide resources and education to help Gloria make this radical change to the specialty coffee market.

This lot of Caturra has undergone a fully washed process to give the coffee a clean, balanced taste which showcases the unique terroir found in high-quality Colombian coffees. The washed process begins with ripe coffee cherries being depulped and left to dry ferment for 36 hours. After, beans are fully washed to clean off any remaining fruit, they are transferred to a solar dryer for 15-20 days.

We are extremely excited to bring this lot of coffee to you as it marks the first time Gloria’s coffee is appearing on the West Coast, and only the second time internationally! Gloria has produced an incredible washed coffee and we’re eager to see more coffees from El Progreso in the future.