The Colombia Federation of Coffee Growers has endeavoured to improve the standard of this country’s coffee exports. Generally speaking the old regional origins famous not so long ago, like Armenia, Manizales and perhaps best known Medellin, are now lost in a well organised but sadly more faceless bureaucracy. Standard Colombian coffee is now distinguished by grade with Supremo being the highest, and Extra the second best. These two grades are often combined into a marketed grade called Excelso. The Swiss Water Process uses only pure warm water to remove the caffeine and then filters this water through charcoal before adding back to the green beans everything except the caffeine. Unusually we have provenance on this Supremo, it is cultivated in the Huila region, on shaded plantation. The trees used for shading the coffee is called Ceiba pentandra, from which we get Kapok. The Mayan civilisation believed, Yaaxché, the central world tree, was the Ceiba, and connected the underworld, the terrestrial realm and the skies.
