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Producer: Mauricio Montanchez
Farm: Los Guaduales
Town / Village: Alto del Obispo
City: San Agustin
Department (Region): Huila
Variety: Pink Bourbon
Processing: Cherries are collected at peak ripeness every 15 days and are left to ferment for 12 hours in a wooden hopper. They are then depulped and left to dry ferment in a tiled tank for between 36 and 40 hours, at which point the mass is covered in water and left to wet ferment an additional 8 hours. The seeds are then washed clean of mucilage and moved to solar dryers where they’re dried for 16 - 20 days.
Elevation: 1,700 MASL
Importer: Semilla Coffee Importers
Front label artwork by David McGuffie
Additional info from the Importer: The Montanchez family is yet another example of the stoic generational farming families that make up the Monkaaba smallholder network. As with many of these families, their stories of how they arrived at coffee production is long, winding, and often almost shocking to the ears of the Global North coffee industry. Mauricio, as the youngest of the Montanchez children, missed the childhood of his older siblings Manuel, Antonio, and Yuri who grew up high in the mountains of Nariño where their parents, Jesus and Maria, dedicated their lives to growing sustenance crops like corn, potatoes, wheat, beans, and raising cattle.
Don Jesus, always an adventure spirit with an eye on the next economic opportunity for his family, often traveled in search of work with his brother. While in the remote region of Putomayo, wedged between Ecuador and Peru, Jesus spent several months as a farm laborer until being presented with the opportunity to buy a small farm in the town of Orito. Seeing that many families were generating their primary income off of the burgeoning industry of the coca plant, Don Jesus believed the time was right for them as a family to focus on a crop that could finally provide a good life. At this time, in the 1990s, coca production was nothing like what it is now. Largely grown by small scale farmers, Colombia produced only a little over 10% of the world’s coca leaves. At first, the vision seemed to be paying off. Despite a major change in climate, from the frozen mountain ranges of Ipiales to a hotter, more jungled climate in Orito, the family adapted well and within a short time period their coca plantation became profitable. But the benefits of this new venture were short lived, as the coca trade began to ramp up in the region. Suddenly, the area was rife with conflicts between armed narcotraffickers and the police, forced labor via kidnapping was on the rise, and the government began the controversial practice of aerially dropping glyphosates onto the coca fields in attempt to halt the drug at its literal root. All of this became too much to bear and with the safety of their growing family top of mind, Jesus and Maria decided it was time for a new chapter.
By then, stories were spreading of the “wandering coffee pickers” who traveled from Oparapa to Isnos, chasing the coffee harvests and the cash that came with it. Jesus and his wandering spirit were again pulled to a new region of Colombia, specifically to southern Huila. San Agustin, just across the river from Isnos, is where Jesus arrived, specifically in the small hamlet outside of town called Alto del Obispo. Here, he fell in love with the beautiful countryside and the friendly people. Coffee farms in this area were incredibly productive at this time, meaning there was no shortage of opportunities to earn fast cash picking cherries. After working on local farms, he decided to visit a few for sale, one of them being Los Guaduoles. Here, Jesus felt an immediate connection and saw a great opportunity for him to continue building the dream he and his family shared, while also ensuring their safety and security.
The Montanchez Cundar family officially arrived to Los Guaduales in 2001, where there was already coffee growing and a stable for cattle. Don Jesus was motivated by their new circumstances to do everything he could to succeed as a coffee farmer, despite having no prior connection or experience with coffee growing. But as Maria shared with us, it was her hard working character who pushed Jesus through his doubts saying, “if he could succeed growing coca, he would succeed with coffee as well.” Not only was it Jesus’ goal to succeed and provide safety and prosperity for his children, but also to create a future for them that they could assume as they reached adulthood. With all of this in his mind, Jesus set to work and over the years, his dedication and commitment were such that he became well-known around San Agustin. Once a Montanchez child finished their primary studies, they became more involved in the farm under the watchful eye of their father. Together, the salvaged old parcels of coffee that were overgrown and neglected, identified the best areas for planting coffee, and set aside parcels for the growing of subsistence crops like tomato, plantains, and corn. Taking advice from their neighbors, they began planting higher quality varieties like Caturra and Pink Bourbon as well as disease resistant varieties like Castillo. Soon, Antonio and Manuel would move off the farm to begin their own lives, leaving Yuri, Robert, and Mauicio to tend to the farm.
Over the years, Jesus came to meet Don Augusto Ortega, who was and is well-known as one of the first to seek out a differentiated market for his coffees in the San Agustin area. As the Monkaaba project took off in late 2020, with Augusto and his wife Marleny as spearheading members, Augusto made the invitation to Don Jesus to join. At this point, the family was selling all of their coffee to large exporters in nearby Pitalito where they would be delivered in large lots and blended into full container shipments. Jesus never knew who his buyer was or where his coffee ended up, and it was one of his dreams to change this model of working. He was intrigued by the new project, and suggested Robert bring some of his first Pink Bourbon harvests to the buying point.
Sadly, in 2021, the family suffered a massive shock when Jesus suddenly passed while working with the cattle in the farm. Yuri, Robert, and Mauricio made the decision to continue in his name, splitting the farm into 3 equal parts for them to manage and to continue using it to sustain the family. When Robert entered the group that same year, it felt like a new opportunity for the family and the realization of his now departed father’s dream - to be recognized for his daily labors, and for his children to have hope for the future. In the time directly after Jesus’ death, Robert quickly became a fixture at the weekly cuppings - first at Esnaider’s farm and then at the bodega in San Agustin. With the success and experience he achieved, Robert began pushing the rest of the family to become more involved. After delivering coffee from this same lot to the group under his own name, in an effort to involve Mauricio more, he offered this plot to him. A small section of the farm that overlooks the Magdalena river and San Agustin is made up of 6000 Pink Bourbon planted just six years ago and it’s been a consistently great lot for 4 years now.
