La Villa

Juan Darío Gómez

Single Estate

Juan Darío is the son of Don Bautista, the farm’s first owner. From a very young age, Juan Darío was involved in agricultural work, helping with harvesting and cleaning crops, and he developed a strong interest in coffee processing early on. When he was 15 years old, he had the opportunity to pursue a technical degree in agricultural production at SENA, a vocational education institution in Colombia. Through this training, he began working with organic fertilizers focused on coffee production. The farm itself is an inheritance from Juan Darío’s father, who first arrived in the area in 1965. The family purchased the land shortly thereafter and began cultivating beans and coffee around 1970. At that time, Indigenous communities did not allow coffee cultivation in the area, and it was socially frowned upon, which meant that the first coffee crops had to be planted hidden among weeds. Later, as the coffee federation began working in the region, coffee production gradually became accepted and more widespread. In 2005, through an initiative led by the cooperative, the family submitted a lot to a local competition and won, receiving a substantial payment. This marked the first major step toward improving both processing methods and coffee varieties on the farm. In 2017, Juan Darío began producing coffee himself and experimenting with different processes, learning how to cup and how to process coffee using natural and washed methods with varying fermentation times. Today, the farm processes approximately 90% of its coffee on-site, using a range of methods entirely carried out at the farm level.