La Chiquita coffee farm is located in Chinchina, Caldas, Colombia. La Chiquita farm in Caldas, Colombia produces Tabi coffee. This lot adopted Mandarin Natural Barrel Aged process. La Chiquita means “The Petite” or “The Little One” in Spanish.

The farm is only two hectares planted with the Tabi variety.And the remaining three hectares of the property is a family resort area with a beautiful limestone mansion with guest rooms, swimming pool, and BBQ area. Diego and his sister Ana Maria bought the farm in 2003. In 2013, Diego moved back to Colombia from Barcelona in which he studied and worked for 20 years serving as a business administrator in the tourism industry. During this time, Diego traveled across Europe and was inspired by wine production. He took several courses and took part in wine tastings and finally decided to devote the next years of his life to small batch wine production in his motherland.

However, when he returned to Colombia ,he found that the wine production was disappointing because it was limited to elite producers and overall was an under-developed industry owing to the lack of infrastructure, knowledge, and equipment. The only vineyard producing wine for sale is located in the department of Boyaca, in which only specific grape varieties can yield a crop. Due to the encouragement of potential opportunities, Diego started looking into other crops that can be turned into wine,, which led him to experiment with fruit fermentations, distillation, and cask aging. Once he decided coffee was the crop which he would dedicate himself, Diego has remained committed to creating an outstanding coffee with gentle, naturally-created distillation notes like those in wine, rum, brandy, or whiskey.

It cost Diego some three years to research, learn coffee tasting, and develop skills as a coffee cupper until he finally found his perfect way for the Tabi variety that was planted on the farm after buying it. Diego produces small batches of 250 kg which he spent much time on taking good care of the coffee at each stage from pickling and fermenting to washing and drying only on the raised beds. The cherries are exclusively picked and sorted by women from the Palestina village 30 minutes away from La Chiquita who receive a better payment for their work.