Oscar Hoyos is a member of a Colombian farming family that has achieved international recognition for the quality of their coffee in recent years. Oscar currently produces coffee in close collaboration with his father Martiniano and his brother Diego. His uncle Argemiro, as well as Diego’s life partner, Lucy Galindez, are also highly accomplished coffee farmers. The vast majority of the coffee that the family produces is pink bourbon, and they have found great success with this interesting variety. Last year, a pink bourbon separation bearing Diego’s name was recognized as the 1st place winning lot at the 2022 Copa de Oro, a competition organized to identify and recognize the finest single-producer coffees sourced from multiple sub-regions of Huila. Passenger was proud to share a small portion of Diego’s competition winning lot on the Reserve Lot menu earlier this year, and we couldn’t be more pleased to see this beautiful coffee from his brother Oscar join the lineup at the present time.

Drinking Oscar’s coffee brings back fond memories of our visit to the Hoyos family’s gorgeous farm shortly after the Copa de Oro competition, last December. Finca la Fortuna is located near the town of San Agustín in the southern region of Colombia’s Huila Department. In addition to being an incredibly charming town, San Agustín is nestled amidst one of the most renowned coffee growing regions in all of Colombia. While other factors no doubt come into play, two significant advantages that many San Agustín coffee farms benefit from are high elevations and excellent soil quality. In this particular case: an ambitious, highly skilled farming family is producing coffee with the benefit of excellent soil, at a favorable elevation above 1800 masl, and focusing on a variety (pink bourbon) that is known to have incredible cup quality potential when grown at high elevations. The delicious coffees of La Fortuna reflect a harmonious interaction of plant genetics and terroir, achieved through the hard work and astute farm management of the Hoyos family.

The present microlot from Oscar Hoyos was processed in a way that is quite common at the family’s farm. After handpicking and thorough sorting to remove underripe and overripe cherries, the coffee undergoes an initial ‘in cherry’ fermentation period of 36 hours. After the cherries are pulped, the coffee is ‘dry fermented’ for an additional 24 hours, before being washed until the parchment is perfectly clean. Drying occurs in a parabolic (covered) drying area and is usually completed in approximately 20 days.