Finca El Paraíso

Finca El Paraíso sits high in the Cauca highlands of southwestern Colombia, where the morning fog rolls in off the Andes and lingers through the picking hours. Three generations of the same family have worked these slopes — the elevation, soil, and slow temperature swing of the region shape every cherry that comes off the branch.

The farm is best known for its lychee-noted naturals — a process that takes weeks of careful drying on raised beds, sun-rotating through the day, the cherries shielded under shade cloth when the afternoon light gets too direct. It's slow work, and it's why the cup tastes the way it does.

We've been working with the family since they expanded their solar drying patios in 2019. They pay above the local market rate to their pickers, run a small community education program for harvest-season workers' children, and keep adding more shade-grown rows each year. Year after year, on the same slope, getting better at what they already knew.