Carmelita

We visited Carmelita for the first time in 2015, and have been buying coffee from her ever since. Her hard work and dedication to the farm impresses us as much today as it did then. Carmelita is easily one of the strongest people we've ever met in this business. She originally had less than a hectare with a very small yield. Then after being hit with Roja (leaf rust), she joined the sustainability project “Sol de la Mañana”, which is run by our exporter Pedro Rodriguez. With their help, Carmelita successfully turned things around, and in 2019 Sol de la Mañana even won the SCA Award for Most Sustainable Business Model.

When we first met Carmelita she had just prepared her land for a second hectare and was ready to start planting her new Caturra and Catuaí seedlings from her nursery. This time she wanted to do everything right from the beginning and, with the help of the agronomists in Sol de la Mañana, she did. We've since watched her farm grow to three hectares, with a lush and abundant production, and today we proudly boast European exclusivity on all of the coffees produced there.