Papayo comes from brothers Elias and Shady Bayter at El Vergel Estate in Fresno, Tolima — the product of years spent refusing to treat coffee as a commodity.
The Bayters started farming in 1995, long before coffee entered the picture. They planted their first trees at El Vergel in 2010 and brought in their first harvest five years later. Then in 2017, as local market prices tightened, Elias, Shady and Martha made a different call: instead of accepting less, they started experimenting — with fermentation, processing, flavour — to find out what their farm could really do.
The rare Papayo variety is picked at peak ripeness, then given a 4-hour aerobic pre-fermentation before moving into sealed tanks for a slow, controlled 96-hour ferment — long enough to build real depth without losing the variety's fruit-forward character. From there it's mechanically dried for 76 hours and rested for 30 days in GrainPro bags, letting the flavours settle before export.
This is exactly why we love working with Forest Coffee and producers like the Bayters: boundary-pushing processing, relentless attention to detail, and a cup that reminds you what Colombian coffee is capable of.
