Andres Cardona started working with coffee when he was twelve. In 2018 he took a specialty coffee course run by the Antioquia government and began experimenting on his family’s farm, and he’s pushed his processing further every harvest since. La Ilusión sits in Santa Bárbara, an hour and a half outside Medellín, four hectares his parents still call home with coffee growing alongside chickens and birds. What started as a family farm has become something larger. Andres now buys and processes coffee for other producers nearby, and he wants to build La Ilusión into a full processing facility so farmers in his community have somewhere to make differentiated coffee of their own.

This coffee comes from Unblended, an importer built around a simple idea: coffee farming should be a career young people actually want. Their Young Producer Program walks new growers through branding, production, and sales so they can sell internationally under their own names instead of disappearing into an anonymous lot. Andres has gone the whole way through this program and serves as a inspiration to many.

The processing is where he spends his attention. Cherries are hand-picked and sorted down to about 95% fully ripe, then fermented whole in open tanks for a full week. After that they’re depulped without water, which leaves the mucilage clinging to the bean instead of rinsing it off. That’s what makes this a black honey, and it’s where the sweetness comes from. The coffee dries on raised sun beds for twelve days before finishing in mechanical dryers, slow enough to keep the fermentation character intact without letting it run away.

The cup is built on cacao and panela sweetness, with dark chocolate and deep purple berry underneath. A grape-like acidity keeps it from sitting heavy, medium body, and a long finish that circles back to cacao. Castillo at 1,650 meters, processed by someone who has spent years figuring out exactly how far he can push it.