Colombia Yominson Trujillo


Caramel and Cantaloupe, Complete.

Roast: Light
Producer: Yominson Trujillo
Region: Tarqui, Huila
Process: Fully Washed
Variety: Variedad Colombia


Some of the best coffees in the world can be found tucked within the remote mountaintop villages around San Agustin in Colombia’s Huila department. Coffees from this area are recognized for their dense and expressive flavor profiles that can’t be found anywhere else, and every year coffee roasters from around the world compete to purchase the best coffees coming from San Agustin.

Surprisingly, despite this region’s reputation, most coffee farmers around San Agustin still sell their coffee into the commodity market or the local market, which pays less than a dollar per pound for their coffees, leaving virtually no opportunity to connect directly with interested specialty-coffee buyers. This unfair system exploits the farmers’ need to sell their crop, while supplying large-scale importing companies with countless bags of cheap Colombian coffee.

Luckily, there are organizations working directly with small family farms around San Agustin to provide a new sustainable path toward providing farmers equitable prices for their coffee, as well as greater autonomy and agency in the process of selling their crop. The Monkaaba Project, led by coffee farmer and taster extraordinaire Esnaider Ortega-Gomez, seeks out farmers who want to establish consistent and stable relationships with buyers in the international specialty market. We were connected to the Monkaaba Project through Semilla Coffee Imports and Advocacy, who are some absolutely rad folks helping coffee farmers on the fringes find homes for their coffees. 

We are proud to say that, through this connection with Semilla and Esnaider, Utopian Coffee was able to purchase the entire winter-harvest of Yominson Trujillo’s coffee. Yominson is one of the several farmers in his area who has managed to sell his coffee into the international specialty market in years past. By partnering with Esnaider and the Monkaaba Project, Yominson was able to earn nearly three times the local market price.

Yominson’s approach to processing his coffee is truly artisanal and reflects a nuanced understanding of how flavors are created in the cup. The result is a cup of coffee with layered complexity that highlights both fruitiness and rich sweetness. We’re so proud to express the amazing flavors of Yominson’s coffee and highlight what is possible when all the actors in the supply chain decide to collaborate and create meaningful opportunities for one another.

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