2025 Colombia • Innovative Washed Process + Decaffeination by Swiss Water®
Jhoan VergaraPink Bourbon
aromatic • lemon custard • botanical
Those of you who've been with us awhile will perhaps be surprised to finally see a decaf on the menu (after a few years without) but certainly won't be surprised to see who's in the starring role. Jhoan Vergara's Pink Bourbon, Java & Tabi varieties are all excellent examples of what you can do when you have a good understanding of the native yeasts and microbes in your arsenal, and how to use them to alchemize flavour through processing. This decaf is effectively a love letter for people who love coffee, the more floral, resinously sweet & soapy the better.
- Variety:
- Pink Bourbon
- Location:
- Huila, Colombia
- Harvest:
- February 2025
- Cup Profile:
- sweet and floral, lemon curd, botanicals, perfumed aromatics
Jhoan Vergara
Jhoan’s parents migrated from Cundinamarca to Huila in the early 90s- they came after an uncle had found success in Huila. Though Huila was a new part of the country for the family, coffee farming was not- Jhoan’s grandparents were coffee producers in the north. The family started with about 15 hectares in total, but they started with just 2 ha in coffee- and grew from there to plant up to 90,000 trees- almost entirely caturra. For the first 15 years or so, the family focused on local markets, and commodity coffees- the specialty coffee industry was still very nascent. In the early 00s, Jhoan’s mother sent a coffee into the Cup of Excellence competition, and though she didn’t win, the family began to focus more on quality, and Jhoan began to learn more about coffee.
At just 15 years old, Jhoan left high school in Pitalito and began to focus on the farm, and on coffee. He began to get curious about coffee- specifically, where it ended up, and who was buying it- and he ended up at the SENA- the Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje, or National Training Service- where many coffee producers learn agronomy, cupping, roasting, and basic brewing skills. At the SENA, Jhoan met Nestor Lasso- which will end up being a crucial friendship and partnership.
Processing
Swiss Water® Decaf is located on our home turf, just outside Vancouver in Burnaby, BC, Canada. They have found a way of removing over 99% the caffeine from coffee by using carbon filters that are the shape of the caffeine molecule.