Behind Our Festive Coffee Collection

In what’s become an annual tradition, our Festive Blend begins each year with Carlos Pola, our long-term Direct Trade partner in El Salvador. Carlos takes an inquisitive, progressive approach to coffee production, continually refining his processing to understand how small changes can shape quality and flavour. It’s an approach that has made our partnership an especially collaborative one for more than a decade, built around shared learning and a willingness to keep elevating and innovating with each harvest.

For our festive release, that collaboration takes on a particular focus. Each year, Carlos develops a lot specifically for us, adjusting the process while working towards the rich, warming character we associate with the season. This year’s lot is from his San Antonio farm and delivers layers of boozy, stewed fruit, from cherry and plum to raisin and date, balanced by orange and spice with a syrupy body. The result brings all the character of mulled wine to the cup.

This year, we’ve paired Carlos’s coffee with a community lot from São José do Rio Pardo, Brazil, produced by Luis Paulo Guardabaxo and selected local partners. The two coffees together build on that depth of fruit and spice, bringing additional sweetness and richness to create an unmistakably festive cup.

Uba marks an important milestone for us: our first co-fermented coffee. Produced by Julio Cesar Madrid and Café UBA in Risaralda, Colombia, this Gesha challenged some of our own preconceptions about the category through a collaborative approach grounded in precision, research and, importantly, transparency.

Fresh pineapple and sugar cane are introduced early in fermentation, followed later by mangosteen oil in a bespoke process designed exclusively for Origin. The coffee is fermented in a bioreactor under a nitrogen-controlled atmosphere, with temperature, pH and pressure carefully managed throughout. The result retains the delicacy we value in Gesha while introducing an intense fruit character, with notes of candied orange, dried apricot and cranberry.

What makes Uba particularly compelling is the thinking behind the process. Café UBA’s work draws on years of research into fermentation and the native microorganisms present on its farms, developed alongside a microbiologist and Universidad de los Andes. Rather than keeping that work opaque, the team has actively documented and shared its learning, an approach to experimental processing that aligns closely with how we want to explore this evolving area of speciality coffee.