This coffee is sourced through Forest Coffee from their project in Gaitania, Tolima. The coffee is produced by more than 40 coffee growers from the region, with each lot processed separately and dried by siblings Emmanuel and Valentina Enciso at their farm La Roma.

The story began in 2006 when Emmanuel decided to dive deeper into the coffee world. He studied processing methods, quality control, and coffee varieties, which sparked his passion for crafting specialty coffees. Like many local farmers, Emanuel struggled with a common challenge—the lack of a central processing hub for quality control. In 2016, Emanuel and his family took action. They established a coffee processing centre to serve over 15 villages in Gaitania, helping local coffee growers process their seeds. This initiative became the Black Condor Project. They built drying stations and consolidated coffee processing with one clear mission: ensuring quality and consistency while paying producers 30% above market rates. Today, the Black Condor Project champions sustainability and uniqueness in the Tolima region, working with 30-45 independent coffee growers.

The coffee processing begins with mechanical removal of the fruit flesh using a de-pulper. The sticky parchment coffee then goes into water tanks where fermentation removes the remaining fruit. After delivery to La Roma, the coffee is sun-dried until reaching the target moisture content, then rested to stabilise before being prepared for export.

Emmanuel Enciso grew up in Gaitania, where his family operated a buying point in Planadas. After learning to cup coffee in 2015, he became the director of quality for ACISP Cooperative. In 2019, he purchased Finca La Roma, drawn to its lush hillsides filled with San Bernardo variety trees planted by the previous owner. Since then, Emanuel and his family have dedicated themselves to cultivating these inherited San Bernardo trees, striving to produce Tolima's finest natural coffees. Beyond coffee, Emmanuel's farm also produces apples, guava, and oranges.

Caturra is a pure-line dwarf mutant of red Bourbon, which was discovered in Minas Gerais, Brazil in 1937. Its leaf and fruit characteristics are similar to Bourbon, and Caturra cherries can be either red or yellow; otherwise known as Caturra Vermelho and Caturra Amarelo. It is short in height with abundant lateral branches and secondary branching, which gives to the plant a vigorous and compact aspect. Caturra was never grown in lowland plantations in Brazil due its susceptibility to coffee diseases and to lack of hardiness for Brazilian frost-risk areas. The adaptability of this variety is broad, so it has spread across Colombia and Central America, where it was and still is grown at higher altitudes.

Castillo, now the most widely grown variety in Colombia, known for its relatively high yields and resistance to both leaf rust and coffee berry disease. This dwarf variety was developed over 23 years and five generations of plants by Federación Nacional de Cafeteros, by crossing Caturra with the Timor Hybrid (a spontaneous interspecies cross between Arabica and Canephora discovered in East Timor).

The washed process was designed to minimise the danger of off-flavours caused by uncontrolled fermentation during the natural process. The cherries are usually sorted using a floatation tank where any under-ripe or defective fruits will float to the top and can be removed. The remaining cherries are then pulped and left in a tank to ferment until the sticky fruit mucilage is soft enough to be washed off the parchment, which is a paper-like layer surrounding the seed.

The design and cleanliness of the tanks is important, and the degree and speed of fermentation will depend on many variables including how much fruit remains, what bacteria and yeasts are present, whether the tank is filled with water, and the environmental conditions.
Once the mucilage has degraded sufficiently it is washed away using water and the remaining parchment coffee, as it’s commonly called, is dried until it reaches a safe moisture content. The bacteria and sugar-rich water used in the process needs to be treated carefully as it can cause algae blooms if it finds its way into streams and rivers.

In situations where large amounts of coffee is processed in bulk like Ethiopia it has proven economical for some operations to use a mechanical demucilager, removing all the fruit from the parchment with minimal water, and foregoing the fermentation stage completely. This however, is believed by some to lead to a reduction in cup quality as many pre-cursors for flavour are created through fermentation.