We’ve been working with Veracruz since 2010. With flavours of crisp red apples, boiled sweets and sparkling rhubarb acidity, it’s a coffee we love to roast.

This small rural farm is one of many which make up the Santa Barbara Estate. Pedro Echavarria and his team are champion innovators, experimenting with fermentation, drying times and processing methods to produce some of the most stunning Colombian coffee we’ve ever tasted.

Ripe red coffee cherries are picked, pulped (to remove the skins) and fermented for up to three days in tanks. Each day’s pick raises the pH in the tank which controls the fermentation. Finally, the surrounding fruit gets washed away, leaving a coffee bean packed with fruity flavours.

Santa Barbara Estate is a leader in social responsibility. Farmworkers earn, on average, 30% more than minimum wage and given houses on the estate. The estate runs scholarship and financial aid programmes for workers’ children and even helps long-standing employees buy land upon retirement.

Best enjoyed black to get a full hit of the epic rhubarb notes in this coffee.