Colombia La Canada

Altitude: 1800 meters

Varietals: Colombia Variety F6

Process:
Cherries are rested for 12 hours before depulping, followed by dry fermentation for 55 hours, dried on raised beds

Harvest: July - September 2025

Region: Tarqui, Huila

Colombia is a country of short distances and extreme variations. One ridge catches late afternoon sun and warm updrafts from a river valley. The next ridge turns frigid by three o’clock and holds mist until morning. The communities are only miles apart, but coffees taste like they come from entirely different worlds. That is the beautiful challenge of Colombia; it’s a landscape that refuses to be simplified and restricted to binary categories. 

For decades, the Colombian state tried to homogenize and flatten the diverse voices of Colombian coffee. Through the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros and Cenicafé, the country built an incredibly ambitious coffee infrastructure program. Extension agents brought training to remote communities. Nurseries provided government-approved seedlings, and renovation programs pushed farms to replant old heirloom varieties with new hybrids. The government’s primary priorities were stability, productivity, export volume, and disease resilience. 

Farmers, meanwhile, live inside a different set of expectations. They needed trees that grew quickly and would both survive and produce great quality. They also needed a market that actually valued their labor, and the quality of the coffees they produced. 

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Colombia began changing its genetic landscape at a national scale. Coffee Leaf Rust threatened the Americas, and Colombia chose to combat this existential crisis by providing new genetically-altered coffee varieties with disease resistance. Traditional arabica varieties like Typica, Bourbon, and Caturra began to give way to new hybrids distributed through state-backed systems. Variedad Colombia became the emblem of that moment. It brought disease resistance and higher yields, and at the same time changed the flavor of Colombia as we knew it. In a single generation, many farms moved from the classic sweetness and aromatic complexity of older arabica varieties toward profiles that feel different, sometimes flatter, sometimes less aromatic, often more bitter, and sometimes simply unfamiliar.

Today, the landscape of Colombia holds all those eras and changes at once. Old Bourbon and Caturra still exist, though in increasingly smaller volumes. Early hybrids remain on many small farms, now mature, and too often overlooked. Newer varieties like Castillo spread widely after the next wave of rust pressure came in the early 2010’s. And in the same community you can find Gesha and Pink Bourbon planted beside aging hybrid blocks, all of it responding to the same climatic conditions, which continue to change unpredictably.  

The specialty world often tells a simple story here. New varieties equal higher quality. Old hybrids' equal compromise. But communities like Tarqui complicate that narrative, and even challenge it.

Tarqui sits in the south central mountains of Huila, a landscape of rolling ridges that trap warmth during the day and pull cold air down the slopes at night. It is the kind of place where cherries ripen slowly and aromatics expand relentlessly. Farmers here talk about their coffee as something specific and local, even when the varieties on their farms come from national distribution programs. They know the ravines and ridges, and they know when their cherries reach optimal ripeness. They’re dedicated to quality, open to experimentation, and hungry to gain recognition for their passion and labor. 

They also know the brutal economic reality. Many farmers sell coffee as quickly as possible because waiting carries risk. Payment can return months later. Inputs cost money today. Renovation asks them to lose production for years. So the choice becomes constant. Chase the promise of higher value markets through slow quality work and new plantings, or stay with the varieties that produce reliably and focus on yield.

When Wonderstate visited Tarqui, we came in with curiosity about that tension. We wanted to taste the community as it truly is, not only the fashionable varieties. We tasted more than forty coffees. We heard the same theme again and again; buyers come and go,but quality still matters, and place still speaks.

One of the most surprising coffees we tasted came from an older hybrid selection. Maryi Yaneth Ramos cultivates coffee on a two hectare farm called La Cañada or “the ravine.” She inherited the land from her parents and watched the region evolve in real time. New varieties arrived, climate patterns shifted, and the buying system changed. And in all this, Maryi adapted without losing hope or passion for coffee. She continued cultivation because she believes the work still holds meaning, even when the market turns its attention elsewhere.

Maryi grows a mix of varieties, including Pink Bourbon, Gesha, and an early hybrid selection known locally as F6. The F6 trees were planted nearly a generation ago, back when her parents still managed the farm. The variety doesn’t hold nearly as much flashy-appeal as Pink Bourbon or Gesha, but we noticed a real story unveiling in the cup profile.

La Cañada captures warm valley air during the day, and cold mountain air settles in at night. This daily swing slows maturation and builds density that resonates in the cup. When we taste Maryi’s F6, we find a coffee that refuses the stereotype of an “old hybrid.” It’s a coffee that’s incredibly clean and complex, silky and effortless. 

Maryi’s F6 is not a novelty coffee, and it is not a nostalgia purchase. It’s evidence that older hybrid varieties can still express something beautiful. The combination of person, place, and variety can tell us new stories, and remind us that trends come and go, but the dedication, talent, and resilience of farmers has incredible staying power. Like many coffees from Tarqui, Maryi’s Variety F6 deserves to be both evaluated and enjoyed on its own merits, not the contemporary trends of variety-chasing. 

This Variety F6 selection by Maryi Ramos is a special expression of a variety long overlooked, replaced, and disregarded. Cultivated on the mountainous slopes of Tarqui, a community silently producing stunning coffees, this selection displays a range of flavors honoring both the place it was cultivated, as well as the distinct flavors found only in F6. In the cup you’ll experience a silky and complex array of fruit and spice tones, with strong overtones of cantaloupe and warming flavors of orange zest, followed by a long spiced finish akin to star anise.