Most coffee farms grow coffee. El Vergel, in Fresno, Tolima, grows a question: what happens when you treat fermentation like a laboratory instead of a tradition?
The Bayter family didn't start in coffee at all. In 1995 they planted avocados and built El Vergel into one of the most productive farms in Colombia — until 2006, when disease and a price collapse wiped out the crop. It was Martha Bayter who decided to replant in coffee, starting with Catimor and red and yellow Caturra, “pushing well past the limits of what she knew at the time.”
What came next is why we buy from them. Instead of settling into one house style, the family taught themselves pulping and fermentation, brought in specialists, and planted a library of exotic varieties — Geisha, Java, Pacamara, Red Bourbon, Laurina. By 2018 they were running aerobic and anaerobic ferments and had built silos for controlled storage. Today more than 28 varieties grow across the estate, and the farm runs its own research into the yeasts and bacteria that drive fermentation.
El Vergel is recognized as the first farm in Colombia to develop the koji process — the fermentation technique behind miso, sake and soy.
We never make a claim we can't name the variable for.
That's our first rule, and control is the whole idea. El Vergel is what it looks like at origin: a farm that can tell you the temperature, the hours, the microbe.
Our Papayo Jungle comes from here — a rare variety, grown and processed on the estate, with a four-hour open-air start and ninety-six hours sealed under a held humidity of 22–25%. Forest, our importer partner, files it in their own “Reserve” category. So do we.
The strawberry, mango and pomegranate you taste in that cup aren't luck. They're the output of a farm that decided, after losing everything to avocados, to control the one thing it could: the ferment.
Colombia Papayo Jungle · 96h Anaerobic Natural — grown and processed at El Vergel Estate. Strawberry, mango, pomegranate.
