Felipe Trujillo is a lifelong learner. His curiosity has made him a pioneer in the Specialty Coffee market, but his dedication has turned him into a true innovator. After a successful career as a CEO at an office supply company, he chose a career-path-change and decided to help his father manage the traditional coffee farm they had inherited from his grandfather. Led by passion, from day one, he began drawing inspiration from the wine industry, where he became a disciplined student of fermentation processes. Today, his farm, La Ventolera, has become a regional institution for specialty coffee. There, he preaches his passion for coffee designing and teaches young farmers the art and science of coffee processing. During Felipe’s processing experiments he asked himself, “How can we make a ‘barrel aged coffee’ that lets the natural flavors of the coffee shine through and co-exist with the unique flavors of an old Rum Barrel?” Typically, barrel aged coffees are a result of aging green coffee in rum barrels. However, Felipe wanted to take a more elegant approach that still maintained the integrity of his coffee. To do this he took an old rum barrel from Ron Viejo de Caldas, a traditional rum distillery in Medellin, and introduced the coffee cherry juice that results from a long carbonic maceration into the barrels. The coffee cherry juice, or Mosto, is left to age and ferment in the used Rum barrel until the next batch of coffee cherries are harvested and hand-selected. Then the coffee cherries are placed into sealed tanks with 50% water and 50% fermented coffee cherry juice from the Rum Barrels. After 180 hours of fermentation, the cherries are let out and left to dry in raised beds for about 4 weeks until they reach 11-12% humidity. We love and believe in the work that Felipe is doing at La Ventolera and partnering with him on this coffee represents everything we love about the global coffee community; pushing the boundaries with innovation, roaster and producer relationships, and truly delicious coffees.