Angel Ortega - Colombia

Sweet and juicy. Tasting like lemonade,  muscovado sugar and with lingering florals.

Origin: Colombia
Region: San Agustín, Huila

Producer: Angel Ortega

Elevation: 1850 masl
Variety: Pink Bourbon
Process: Washed

Cherries are picked every 15 days when they reach peak ripeness and are then left overnight in cherry. The coffee is de-pulped the next morning before undergoing a 36-40 hour dry ferment. It’s rinsed three to four times and then moved to raised beds,
where the coffee is dried for between 18-22 days under white mesh. Coffees are stored in parchment in Grainpro until ready to be milled.

Roasted for: Filter


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Angel Ortega is a second- generation coffee grower from San Agustin, Huila, who has been growing coffee since he was a teenager. He began in his youth working alongside his father and brother, and managed his plot of 700 trees to begin with.

In 1985, at the age of 24, he set out on his own and planted a lot of 10,000 trees of the Colombia variety. Though San Agustin is now a storied coffee-growing area, with nearly 6000 coffee growers across the region, in the 1980s, the arid soils in the Kennedy zone where Angel set up to grow meant the area was bereft of coffee.

Every summer, when the heavy rains would come, the soil would wash down from the farms and cover the roads, such was the situation.
That being said, those who were able to successfully grow coffee, like the Ortega brothers benefited from certain aspects that are now yearned after.

For example, in the 1980s, nobody in this area used chemical products on their coffee, as there was no need for heavy fertilizers used to encourage the growth of beautiful crops.

Local buyers had limited options for parchment-dried coffee, often subject to prohibitive fees.

Compare that to the present day, where a steady trend towards monocultures coupled with the increase of climate-related diseases like roya means that producers need to apply fertilizers three to four times a year and must treat for diseases at least once a year as well.
Due to a much less developed coffee-growing culture forty years ago, Angel originally sold his coffee en verde, which means that it was depulped and then sold without being dried.

Despite that, Don Angel (like many of his generation) reflects on the times gone by with nostalgia. Then, the cost of living was much lower, and the higher productivity with lower input costs of their farms meant coffee growing could be a much more profitable venture than it became over the resulting decades.

In the year 2000, Don Angel joined a local coffee growers union that assisted him in learning about specialty-grade coffees and he and the other growers began to develop a client base in Europe through this. However, these were always sold in blend lots without his name on them.
In 2018, Don Angel achieved a micro-lot sale of coffee under his name, but he always felt
distanced from his roaster clients and even the importers who purchased his coffees. He hopes to continue to improve his coffee quality, but has brought his lots Monkaaba and Semilla this year for the first time due to their commitment to pay him the highest prices he’s ever received, upfront and without delay, and to stay in close contact with him about the final destination of his coffee.