022 - Sergio Caro

We anticipate that this coffee will be roasted for 2026 season subscribers the weeks of January 5 and January 12, 2026.

We open our 2026 season with an Aviary exclusive from a young, award-winning producer in Caicedo, Antioquia—a multi-stage, extended fermentation washed Chiroso that bursts with juicy, jammy, vibrant notes of mango, pink peppercorn, raspberry, tangerine and pineapple. 

From Christopher: "Hiding in plain sight and a not-quite-four hour drive from Medellín grows some of the best coffee in the world near a town called Urrao. Over a decade ago, Carmen Montoya's win at Cup of Excellence appeared poised to catapult the cultivar she grew—Chiroso—to the stature of Gesha, or later, Pink Bourbon. Later discovered to be an Ethiopian landrace (like both Gesha and Pink Bourbon), Chiroso never found much adoption outside of Urrao—perhaps owing to confusion surrounding its name, which seems to refer to two different trees attached to a traditional variety as a prefix ("Caturra Chiroso" or "Bourbon Chiroso") or perhaps because of the seemingly unpredictable nature of its cups.

"The best Chirosos, though, rivaled the best Ethiopians I've ever had—and all had come from Urrao, from producers like Carmen.

"On the road from Medellín, about two-thirds of the way to Urrao, sits a town called Caicedo. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the town was among the most dangerous in Medellín as paramilitary groups like the AUC and rebels vied with each other and the government for control, leading to massacres, kidnappings and intimidation. To fund their activities, the militants exploited coffee farmers, nearly all of whom grew coffee on small plots of land that averaged just 2.5 hectares on the steep cayonside along the Cauca River. A grassroots local non-violent movement that emerged following the kidnapping of Governor Guillermo Gaviria during the March of Peace from Medellín to Caicedo in 2002 coupled with the consolidation and demobilization of the AUC and FARC weakened the hold of the militants on the town—leading to a watershed 2007 vote in which a popular referendum ratified the town as the first non-violent municipality in Colombia.

"Many people left Caicedo in the interim to escape the threat of violence and in pursuit of greater economic opportunity in the city. Those who remained and continued to grow coffee were able, as a result of the peace, to be reached by specialty buyers; the rust epidemic of 2010 drove market prices higher and led to greater prosperity for the town. The climate, elevations and growth of traditional cultivars advantaged Caicedo in a new era for Colombian coffee anchored in specialty.

"Sergio Caro, now 28, was the only one of his six siblings to stay in Caicedo. While the rest left for the city, Sergio stayed to work his grandmother's farm. He went on to earn a technical degree in Agricultural Management and manage quality for Cooperativa de Caficultores de Salgar, learned about green grading, joined the PEC training program through FNC and learned to cup. In 2019, he planted his own small plot of land on his family's farm—just 3,500 trees—with seeds originally from Carmen Montoya in Urrao.

"His small farm's soaring elevations of 2,400 meters make it ideal for the production of an Ethiopian landrace like Chiroso; cold temperatures enable extended fermentations and multi-stage processing without risking defects. Sergio's cupping skill enabled him to rapidly iterate his processing to get the most from the coffee he grew.

"Over the past year or eighteen months, I've collaborated with my friends at Unblended in Medellín in support of their inspiring work with young producers in Antioquia—producers like Sergio, who receives a fixed price for his Chiroso that is 50% higher than the FNC's pricing even during a record-high market year. Together, we've developed processes and protocols for ensuring sample integrity, calibrated around quality control parameters, and designed processing and drying experiments to help producers in their network improve quality, differentiate their coffees, or in some cases, reduce defects. But aside from AVIARY#06, I'd never purchased a coffee through the network of producers they work with.

"When I tasted Sergio's coffee—which appeared in a packet of samples delivered to me for feedback in the summer of 2025—I knew it would be the second.

"A 320 kilo lot from of 1,000 kilos of that year's total production would go on to become a winner in the Tierra de Diversidad competition, netting him $27 per pound. This lot—an Aviary exclusive—was processed using the exact same protocol from peak harvest and presents in a complex, bright, vibrant cup with jammy notes of mango, pink peppercorn, raspberry, pineapple and tangerine."