Tres Dragones

Café Granja La Esperanza is a name that carries a lot of weight in the world of Colombian specialty coffee. The Potosí farm in Valle del Cauca was founded back in 1945, and in the 1990s, it was taken over by the Herrera brothers, who transformed it into what it is today: one of the most experimental farms in the world. It was they who dared to plant Geisha in Colombia—and it paid off. Today, Potosí grows about twenty-five varieties simultaneously, some of them purely for research into adaptation to Colombian soil and as a safeguard against climate change. In addition, they have their own hybrids from hand-crossbreeding, twenty percent of the farm’s acreage set aside as nature reserves, and wages for workers that are 24% above the Colombian average. Pickers are paid by the day, not by weight—a detail that shows in the cup. Tres Dragones itself undergoes a process that resembles a laboratory more than drying beds.

The cherries are harvested one by one at peak ripeness; only the densest are selected through flotation, and their Brix levels are measured. This is followed by 24 hours of aerobic fermentation in open tanks, then 72 hours of anaerobic fermentation in closed tanks—hence the depth and complexity. Drying takes place in mechanical dryers at a stable 38 °C for about 8 to 12 days, and the coffee then rests in an air-conditioned warehouse at 18–19 °C. Incidentally, it was those three dryers that gave the coffee its name: after a fire in 2017 that razed the Potosí farm to the ground, the Herreras rebuilt the operation from scratch and acquired three “dragons.” Varieties: Caturra and Colombia, a natural-process hybrid, roasted for drip coffee—but it also works well as a fruity espresso.