From Cherry to Cup: The Whole Journey on One Finca
A coffee bean travels a long way before it reaches a cup. On a finca, you can see the entire path in a single afternoon.
At most roasteries, the story begins with a bag. On the finca, the story begins with a flower.
Summary
- Coffee starts as a flower, becomes a cherry, and is processed, dried, roasted, and brewed.
- We handle more of those steps ourselves than most farms do.
- That closeness shapes how we think about flavor.
Key takeaways
- Every step of coffee processing leaves a mark on the cup.
- Controlling more of the chain gives you more control over flavor.
- This is the foundation for our work with roasting and flavoring.
Coffee is one of the few things we drink every day that most people have never seen being made. Here is the whole journey, as we see it from the finca.
1. The flower and the cherry
A coffee tree blooms briefly, with small white flowers that smell like jasmine. Over the following months the flowers become green cherries, then slowly turn red as they ripen.
2. Picking
Pickers walk the rows and take only the ripe cherries. This is slow and skilled. Picking the wrong fruit changes the flavor of the lot.
3. Processing
Within hours, the cherries go to the mill. The skin and pulp are removed and the beans inside are washed and prepared for drying.
4. Drying
The beans dry on patios in the sun. We are building a new patio at the finca for exactly this stage, a project that shares ground with the roots we rescued.
5. Resting and milling
Once dry, the beans rest, then are hulled and sorted. This is the stage where we get a look at each lot and decide what it can become.
6. Roasting
Roasting turns a green seed into something that smells like coffee. It is where the farm's work meets a roaster's judgment. We roast most of our own coffee, which we explain in Why We Roast Most of Our Own Coffee.
7. The cup
Finally, the coffee is ground and brewed. Whatever happened upstream shows up here, in the first sip.
Why we care about the whole chain
Our family of businesses has grown outward from the farm. The same people who pick the cherry think about the roast, the flavor, and even the candle you might light beside your cup. Nothing in this chain is separate. The roots we turn into candleholders come from trees that spent a century producing cherries. The coffee, the wood, and the flavor work all grow from one piece of ground.
Common questions
What is the most important step in coffee quality?
Picking ripe cherries is the foundation, but every step matters. Processing, drying, and roasting each leave a mark that shows in the cup.
Do you control every step?
We handle many steps ourselves, including roasting for most of our coffee, and we continue to build the capacity to do more.
Keep reading
Every piece is one of one.
Browse the specimen archive and acquire the piece that speaks to you. Each is catalogued once and sold once.