Producer & Farm
Álvaro Andrés Cardona Molina has been working with coffee since he was 12 years old — a family tradition that grew into a genuine vocation. He currently manages Villa Lucía, his uncle's farm in Santa Bárbara, Antioquia, where he cultivates Colombia, Castillo, and Cenicafe varieties. Andrés is a member of the Young Producer Program from our exporting partner Unblended Coffee, a program that guides young producers in building their own coffee businesses from the ground up.
What sets Andrés apart is his restless curiosity. He's constantly experimenting with process, always looking for new ways to make his coffee singular — and it shows at every level of production.
Varietal
Castillo and Colombia — two foundational Colombian varieties known for their resilience and adaptability, here pushed into new expressive territory by Andrés's processing approach.
Process: Luna Azul
Andrés calls this process "Blue Moon" — and it's a meaningful departure from a conventional black honey. To understand it, a quick map: in a washed process, the coffee cherry is fully depulped and washed clean before drying. In a natural, the full cherry dries intact around the seed. Honey processing sits in between — the cherry is depulped but not washed, leaving the mucilage layer clinging to the seed during drying. Black honey refers to a higher degree of retained mucilage, pushing the profile closer to the natural end of that spectrum.
Luna Azul goes a step further. Andrés first ferments the coffee in cherry in open tanks for a full week. The cherries are then depulped without water — a deliberate choice to preserve as much mucilage as possible. Finally, the beans are dried on raised beds for one to three weeks, until they reach a moisture content of 11%.
The result is a coffee with all the richness and fruit intensity of the process, executed with enough precision to stay clean and sweet throughout.
Cup Profile
Everything about this cup leans blue. Big, bold blueberry leads — sweet and almost syrupy — before tropical papaya opens things up mid-palate. It finishes with a distinctive grape Pixy Stix note that's playful and persistent, pulling the whole cup back into that purple-fruit territory. Despite the intensity, there's none of the funk or ferment edge that can accompany coffees like this. It's clean, jammy, a little like blueberry Pop-Tarts, and genuinely one of the most fun cups we've had in a while.
