Colombia El Puente

El Puente is named after a processing center located in the center of a heavy coffee growing area in the Huila region of Colombia. Similar to washing stations in Africa's coffee growing regions, El Puente is a gathering place for smallholder farmers to process and sell their coffees. El Puente, which translates to 'the bridge' is literally (and figuratively) a bridge connecting these smaller sized coffee growers with the larger international community. Farmers here sometimes lack the resources and space they need to process all the coffee they harvest, but by selling their coffee to the El Puente processing center, they receive better prices than if they processed their coffees by themselves, taking on the risk of anything going wrong during fermentation or drying.

This coffee is a fruit-forward, natural-processed coffee that was dried while still in the coffee fruit. When coffee is processed naturally many of those sweet flavors get absorbed into the seeds, develop during the roasting process, and especially shine in the cup.  El Puente focuses mainly on honey and natural-processed coffees – these methods use 80% less water than fully washed methods – but they also help their producers with fully washed coffees as well.