Demetrio Sanchez Pino Geisha • Washed

Demetrio Sánchez Pino is a first-generation coffee grower from La Plata, a municipality on Huila's southwestern border with Cauca. His farm, El Arrayal, sits at 2,100 meters in the vereda of Alto Cañada. With this elevation, that puts it among the higher-grown coffees of the region and well within the range where Gesha is known to be expresses best. Demetrio and his wife Rosalba run the farm growing a range of varieties including Caturra, Var. Colombia, Pink Bourbon, Arushi, and Gesha.

After hand-selection at peak ripeness, cherries are floated to remove underripe fruit and debris, then fermented intact for 12 hours in open tanks. After de-pulping, the coffee undergoes a second fermentation submerged in water for 64 hours in sealed plastic barrels — a long, controlled extraction that builds complexity without losing varietal definition. The wet parchment is washed once, then moved to raised beds inside a parabolic dryer for 20 to 25 days before being sealed in GrainPro bags for stabilization.

This is our third year purchasing Demetrio's coffee, and each year has reinforced why we keep coming back. In 2024, his Gesha placed 2nd in the Western Division of the Copa de Oro — our importing partner’s annual blind cupping competition that draws over 200 smallholder submissions across three divisions of southern Huila, evaluated by an international judging panel across multiple days. The competition exists to surface producers who might otherwise go unnoticed and to reward quality with meaningfully higher prices.