Profile

Bibiana Mena and her husband Diego López have farmed La Cumbre (The Summit) since 2010. Diego is an agronomist by profession who grew up learning coffee from his aunt and developed his knowledge of coffee production during his time working with the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia. The farm consists of five distinct areas, originally all smaller farms, which put together form La Cumbre. The entire farm lies at high altitude, with a range spanning 400 meters between the lowest and highest points. La Cumbre is not an especially large farm, so the elevation range highlights the steepness of the terrain. The steepness brings many challenges, one of which is moving cherry up and down to the processing station, as well as breakfast and lunch to the picking team during the harvest. A cable car was built for this purpose in 2017 and it makes lighter work of the terrain. Another challenge is timing the harvest and processing across so many altitudes. The difference in harvest time between the lowest and highest points for maturation is long, with the lower altitude coffee at 1750m ripening first, and the highest altitude at 2100m ripening a full month later.