Yessica and Diego Parra are siblings and fourth-generation coffee growers from Pitalito, Huila. The family line started with their great-grandfather, who planted coffee once he saw it could support a household. Their grandfather carried it on while their grandmother ran the trading side, and together they became the first local buyers for the National Federation of Coffee Growers, purchasing pulped coffee from neighbors and selling it up the chain. Yessica and Diego grew up inside that, but they’ve taken it somewhere different. El Mirador is seven hectares planted almost entirely to specialty varieties, Caturra and Pink Bourbon alongside Bourbon Ají, Sidra, Geisha, and this one.

Papayo is a Colombian variety that very few people grow, named for cherries shaped like small papayas. It’s capable of real sweetness and complexity, and it’s delicate enough that the processing has to be right. Yessica and Diego take their time with it. Only ripe cherries are picked, floated for a second round of sorting, then left whole in open tanks for 24 hours to oxidize and build complexity before depulping. After that the coffee ferments another 60 hours in open tanks, which sharpens the sweetness and tightens the structure of the cup, then it’s washed and dried on sun beds for two to three weeks.

We buy this coffee through Unblended, an importer working to make coffee farming a career young people actually want through their Young Producer Program, which helps growers build and sell under their own names. Yessica and Diego exported from their own farm for the first time recently. In the cup it’s bright yellow and tropical fruit over a silky caramel and dulce de leche sweetness, balanced and clean and hard to put down.