Colombia - Vladimir Calambás (2025)

Cauca is among the four departments in Colombia where we focus our sourcing efforts. This microlot comes from Inzá, Cauca, not far from the town of San Antonio, where we've long sourced community lots for Bedford and Flatiron. 

Vladimir Calambás grows borbón de la montaña, a variety that caught our attention last year at Pergamino's lab in Medellín. On the cupping table, these lots were silky and floral, with sweet berries overtaking the citrus we normally associate with washed coffees from Cauca. 

Borbón de la montaña, "mountain bourbon," originated on an old mountain top estate near the village of San Vicente. This estate had long grown bourbon, one of the major varieties of coffee grown throughout the world and commonly seen on traditional Colombian coffee farms (particularly older farms that have not been replanted with new, disease resistant cultivars like castillo). Coffee farms at such extreme elevations often struggle with productivity due to the cold weather, so when the producer observed one of his trees outperforming all of the others, he began to cultivate more with seeds from that same tree. Soon, others in the area began planting this cultivar as well, before many were aware of its unique flavor profile.

This story caught our interest in the way it echoes what we've seen with other high quality varieties; chiroso, papayo, and pink bourbon are excellent examples. In each case, coffee was found growing on a farm that didn't quite resemble the other coffee plants surrounding it; the fruit ripened to a different color, or had an unusually elongated shape, or produced exceptionally good yields despite the climatic circumstances. Often these would be given a colloquial name to differentiate them; bourbon (like pink bourbon) for tall-growing varieties or caturra (like caturra chiroso) for compact varieties, for example. Only later, in the case of pink bourbon and chiroso, did it become evident that these were not mutations of bourbon and caturra at all, but entirely distinct varieties more directly related to an unknown Ethiopian landrace. While this is not to imply that borbón de la montaña is anything but a useful mutation of bourbon, it always captures our interest when a seemingly novel variety comes to light. 

This is our first year buying coffee from Vladimir Calambás, and we're hopeful that in future seasons we'll have the opportunity to learn more about Vladimir and his farm. Vladimir delivers coffee to Pergamino as one of their allied producers, a group of over 600 small-scale farmers across five Colombian departments. This program is designed to build transparency and stability into the supply chain, ensuring clear price premiums for quality while supplying technical and agronomic assistance to farmers.