Producer: Sebastian Ramirez
Farm: El Placer
Region: Quindío
Variety: Gesha
Process: Mandarin White Honey CM
Altitude: 1750 - 2000 masl
Harvested: 2025
Cupping notes: Florals like bergamot and honeysuckle, mandarin, orange blossom, white peach.
This is El Placer turned up to eleven - a single-origin Geisha from Sebastián Ramírez, processed with his signature mandarin white honey method. It’s the coffee he’s proudest of, and the one that best shows what his style of fermentation can do.
Sebastián is a fourth-generation coffee grower from Quindío who walked away from law studies to take over his father’s farm, El Placer, in the village of Buenos Aires de Calarcá. The 14-hectare farm sits at 1,650–2,000 m.a.s.l., shaded by native trees and surrounded by the kind of biodiversity that makes slow, careful ripening possible. Over the last years he’s turned El Placer into both a farm and a processing lab, and his lots now sit among the most talked-about coffees in Colombia.
The mandarin white honey process is where that reputation really comes from. Ripe Geisha cherries go through a dual-stage anaerobic fermentation in sealed tanks (with controlled CO₂), followed by an oxygen-rich soaking, then slow, carefully monitored drying. Once the coffee is stable, Sebastián gives it a final 30-day rest together with dehydrated mandarin peels - a green coffee “stabilisation” that gently lifts citrus aromatics while softening the edges of the acidity.
The result is a Geisha that feels incredibly dialled-in: bright and expressive, but still silky and composed. If you want to see how far Colombian processing has come - and what happens when a producer really leans into their craft - this is the coffee to spend time with.
