Colombia Santiago Patiño
Any orders placed after midnight on Sunday will be fulfilled the following week.
Region: Salento, Quindio, Armenia, Colombia
Farm: Finca El Ocaso
Elevation Grown: 1850MASL
Variety: Gesha
Process: Honey
Tastes like: Pineapple, Apricot Jam, Meyer Lemon, Floral
We arrived at Finca El Ocaso just as the rain started pouring. By the time we made it inside, we were drenched. Santiago Patiño welcomed us in, and once we settled, he started talking about what he’s been working on.
We’ve sourced coffee from Santiago for years. There was the Pink Bourbon we released under the Finca El Ocaso name, and more recently, Papayo, which we put out under his own name. His coffees are always precise and well-processed, but this visit gave us a look at something new.
El Ocaso is both a farm and a tourism site. There’s a coffee shop, a hotel, and a full education program where visitors can learn about coffee from start to finish. Santiago also spends a lot of time teaching online. His Instagram, @santiagoelcafetero, has nearly a million followers, where he explains the differences between commercial and specialty coffee in a way that makes sense to everyday consumers.
During our visit, we walked through his variety garden and checked out his drying area. The cupping was where things got interesting. Santiago has always been known for clean, well-structured coffees, but now he’s experimenting with fermentation. He’s been working with co-fermentations and different inoculations to see how they impact the final cup.
This Gesha was one of the standouts. It comes from trees planted in 2016 and was processed using a 120-hour lactic fermentation with must as the base. After that, it was sun-dried for 20 days at controlled temperatures. The result is a coffee with lemongrass aromatics, prolonged sweetness, and a smooth, silky body.
Santiago has always been focused on precision, and it shows in how this coffee turned out. It’s structured, expressive, and represents the kind of work he’s doing at El Ocaso.