Dulce Misterio is one of our newest providers. Its owner, Mauricio Duque used to be a conventional coffee exporter, but the pandemic put his company out of business, and he now had time to fulfill his dream of producing the best Colombian specialty coffee.

His farm, near Neira in Caldas, is 13ha at altitudes from 1850 to 2040masl, 100% planted with coffee. He is a firm believer in clean and simple coffee processing which enhances the attributes of the terroir. The many varieties grown on his farm are: geisha, chili bourbon, pink bourbon, caturro chiroso, caturra, Colombia and típica.

Most of Mauricio’s coffee is processed as fully washed. Cherries are picked at optimum ripeness by his team of growers. They are trained in picking and paid a fixed amount, regardless the quantity of coffee they pick in a day. This means pickers don't have pressure to pick large amounts of coffee where unripe cherries would probably be present. The coffee is hand sorted; under and over ripe cherries are processed separately. It is then floated and washed. The cherries are then moved to closed tanks for a 48-hour fermentation. The coffee is then pulped with a very small amount of water to get rid of the mucilage. It is then moved to the fermentation tanks for another 48-hour mucilage fermentation. The coffee is washed once in fresh water then moved to the drying station.

It is dried on African beds inside a parabolic drier, every lot kept separate. The coffee is dried in separate lots to have control over whether lots from the same varietal should be mixed or not. Every bed is marked with a lot number that will be carried until the end of the process. The coffee is then dried until target moisture of 10-10.5%. is reached.