And we couldn't be more excited
We can’t believe it’s been ten years already. This journey has undoubtedly been a wild one – one that could not have happened without so many people. From our beautiful coffee-growing neighbors to all of the wonderful roasters, importers, and coffee lovers, we’d just like to say a resounding THANK YOU! We wouldn’t be here without you.
Over the years, we’ve gone through our ups and downs, facing head-on any challenges presented to us. But we’ve remained 100% focused on what makes us, us. Our innovation, our community, and our environment.
From November 2011, till the present day, we’ve been working on our dream to challenge the status quo of the coffee industry. And we are just elated to have you along.
INNOVATION – Quality is the Future –
When starting on our journey, one of our key goals was to deliver coffees with outstanding cup quality and to do so consistently. We knew we had a lot to do.
We’d found our perfect location. We selected some amazing varietals and created the perfect environment to nurture them. We invested in training people to harvest the cherries with care. But post-harvest processing quickly became our niche and to this day it is a focus of ours.
When we began, naturally processed coffees were rare, and extensive fermentation was completely uncommon; however, the unique cup characteristics they possessed had up captivated us. We knew this is where true innovation lay ahead.
We dove deeper into intricate processing, learning much from the coffee itself as we went. As our innovations brought us incredibly unique profiles, we sought to understand our coffee as a part of our land and microclimate.
This is how Bioinnovation was born. By working with fermentation substrate, and leading Colombian microbiologists, we strove to encapsulate the essence of our farm in our processes. This process has given us a deep look into the microbial mosaic of our terroir, and given us the ability to showcase coffees completely unique to our farm. And there’s still much to learn, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.
SUSTAINABILITY – Breaking the Chains of Monoculture / Embracing Polyculture
After years of listening to our crops, we couldn’t help but hear the cries of our soils as well. They were begging for a better quality of life, a life where all of the necessary nutrients and more came from the environment of our ecotope. We turned to coffee-growers experienced in agroecological practices to inform our next decision. It turned out to be a big one. In October 2018, we cut down thousands of exotic coffee plants. From Geisha to SL-28, nothing was safe from our desire to create a polyculture farm. We used that space to plant 24 more plant species, all with the explicit intention of improving our soil, and therefore plant quality.
It took some people a while to understand, but now we like to think that they are tasting the difference.
Community and Culture – Expanding the Model, Increase the Impact
For the past few years, we’ve been so lucky to see people all over the world enjoying our coffees. Our meticulous attention to detail and passion for the craft have led us to many nuanced practices in our post-harvest processing – nuances that we feel make all the difference in the final cup.
But it was the nuance required to create the community-minded business model that stands out to us as we recall the years past. Coming together with our local coffee-growing community to create a trade model that truly works for everyone involved perhaps our favorite innovation. Because of this, we are able to share the hard work of our Neighbors with the world of specialty coffee, despite all of the challenges involved.
We believe that community is key. And we believe, wholeheartedly, that quality extends beyond the cup and into the relationships of everyone involved in the supply chain. With that in mind, in 2013, Neighbors & Crops was born, and with it, the chance to broaden our impact to include over 70 families within our area.