Some producers fall into coffee. Edinson Argote built his way in, one job at a time.
Originally from San Adolfo in Huila, Edinson lost his mother at three and was raised by his sister. He left home at eleven to find work, spent his teenage years moving between jobs, and at eighteen joined the Colombian Army for an eighteen-month stretch before being discharged. His first proper introduction to coffee came at twenty, working at his cousin's buying station in Acevedo. The job was largely physical, loading and unloading sacks, but in the quieter moments he started pulling apart what made one coffee different from another. He took cupping courses, sharpened his palate, and got hooked on the sensory side of things.
From there he moved into Cauca, eventually landing at Granja Paraíso 92 in Piendamó under Wilton Benítez, one of the producers who effectively wrote the playbook for Colombia's high-intervention processing scene. Edinson rose to head of quality and processing control, picking up the technical and fermentation expertise that now defines his work. The whole time, the goal was the same. To one day run his own thing.
Ángela, Chorro Alto and the start of Quebraditas
Luz Ángela Rojas comes from a coffee-growing family in Oporapa, in the south of Huila. She left home at sixteen to study nursing in Neiva, spent seven years there and another four in Bogotá, then came back during the pandemic and stayed. She gave up nursing for the family farm, Chorro Alto, and started pushing it towards specialty herself, planting a small patch of Papayo and Bourbon hybrids while Edinson was still up in Cauca learning his trade.
The two met, and the pieces fitted. Ángela had the land and had already started the work. Edinson had the processing. Together they set up Quebraditas Coffee Farm. Ángela runs the administration, Edinson the processing and farm operations, and the project covers both farms under one name.
The farm
Quebraditas sits in the Macizo Colombiano, the mountain knot in the south of the country where the Andes split into three ranges. The two farms are in the vereda of Alto Caparrosa, just outside Oporapa, between 1,600 and 1,850 metres above sea level. Chorro Alto is around 10 hectares of traditional varieties like Caturra and Colombia. Quebraditas itself is an additional 8 hectares, planted almost entirely with rare cultivars. Eighteen hectares in total, in a part of Huila that still doesn't carry the name recognition of Acevedo or Pitalito.
The varietal list reads like a wishlist for anyone who follows rare coffees. Gesha, Maragesha, Bourbon Sidra, Bourbon Pointu, Bourbon Chiroso, Bourbon Ají, Eugenioides, Wush Wush, Sudan Rume, Pacamara, Java, Arará, Ombligon and Papayo. The long-term plan is to phase out the traditional varieties entirely and commit all eighteen hectares to the rare and the unusual.
The agronomic side gets as much attention as the processing. Strategic shade canopies, organic inputs, soil pH and calcium management, and a working belief that cup quality is decided in the soil long before the cherries reach the fermentation tanks. The processing facility sits on what used to be pastureland at Chorro Alto and includes an on-site laboratory for cupping and quality control, plus a drying silo for when the weather won't allow sun-drying. Chorro Alto's own infrastructure is still basic and labour-intensive, and rebuilding it is the next job on the list.
Partners are welcome to visit, walk the rows and follow the whole operation from cherry to dry parchment. Quebraditas sells green coffee directly to importers in the US, Europe and Asia, and to roasters and cafés inside Colombia, which is not something most farms this size attempt.
How Edinson processes coffee
If varietals are half of what defines Quebraditas, processing is the other half, and it's the part Edinson is best known for. The years at Granja Paraíso 92 left a clear mark. Most of what leaves the farm runs on two signature techniques: thermal shock and yeast inoculation.
Thermal shock alternates hot and cold to control how fermentation develops. Cherries are pulped and washed with water at around 45°C to strip the mucilage, then sealed off with a 5°C cold finish to stop fermentation cleanly. Yeast inoculation swaps the unpredictable wild yeasts of traditional fermentation for specific cultivated strains, so Edinson knows exactly what's doing the work. He runs both techniques in washed and natural styles, in small 80 to 100kg batches, with pH, Brix and temperature monitored throughout. It's closer in spirit to winemaking than to anything most coffee farms were doing a decade ago.
The farm keeps two lines running side by side. A traditional line of classic washed coffees across the older varieties, and an experimental line where the thermal shock and inoculation work happens.
On the competition table
For a farm this young, the record is startling. Justin Bull won the 2025 US Brewers Cup on an advanced natural SL28 from Edinson. Scenery Coffee, who were buying from Quebraditas early, reckon his coffees took both first and second place at that year's US Brewers Cup and second at the US Barista Championship. An Ombligon competition lot of his turned up on the US stage the same year.
He's been over to the UK, too, showing coffees at a brewing event in Manchester and at the 2025 London Coffee Festival, where a hydro natural yeast-inoculated Gesha from his competition trials went on bar.
Sharing it around
Edinson has become something of a quiet mentor in the region. His processing knowledge has been central to the rise of El Jaragual, and he works with two other farms, one in La Plata and one in the Argentina municipality. He distributes Sidra and Gesha seeds to producers who'd otherwise have no way of getting hold of them, and lots that pass through Quebraditas ship under the name of the grower who actually produced them rather than under the farm's.
The stated ambition goes further than the two farms. Edinson and Ángela want Oporapa recognised as a coffee-growing region in its own right, and the neighbours brought along with it.
A word on Papayo
Papayo is named for its cherries, which are elongated and pointed rather than round, and which reminded producers of papaya. The seeds inside are large and dense. Once you've seen the variety in a field, it's easy to pick out from the Caturra and Castillo around it.
Where it came from is the difficult bit. One theory is a natural mutation of Caturra or Bourbon. Another is descent from Ethiopian material brought to Colombia at some point in the past, and producers have long pointed to a rumoured research station near Acevedo that grew varieties from around the world before being abandoned, leaving its plants to spread through the surrounding farms. Genetic testing hasn't closed the question. Samples have been reported as closely related to Ethiopian landrace material, and that line gets repeated as established fact, but World Coffee Research has cautioned against treating informal claims about Papayo's identity as proven without broader testing. Our full guide to Papayo walks through the theories.
Edinson knows that ground better than most. San Adolfo, where he grew up, sits in the Acevedo municipality the variety is most associated with, and Wilton Benítez has grown Papayo at Granja Paraíso 92 as well.
The advanced honey process
Honey processing, in its standard form, sits between washed and natural. Cherries are depulped but the sticky mucilage is left clinging to the parchment as it dries. The technique has been around for decades, particularly in Central America.
Advanced honey, as practised at Quebraditas, is a different beast. Every stage, oxidation, fermentation, drying and stabilisation, is measured, inoculated and temperature-controlled. A 48-hour oxidation phase, before the cherries are depulped at all, softens the cell walls and lets enzymatic activity start work from inside the fruit. Fermentation doesn't wait for whatever wild yeast happens to drift in. A specific strain goes in alongside a measured dose of sugar, with Brix readings tracking the sugar conversion, pH tracking the acid development, and temperature held steady so nothing stalls or runs away.
Mechanical drying follows, stepped from 39°C down to 36°C across 72 hours. Slow, even moisture loss, no hot spots, no surface crusting and no weather to throw the batch off course. The parchment then rests in GrainPro bags so internal moisture can redistribute before milling, which is what keeps the green coffee stable in transit and on the roaster.
Honey is new ground for Quebraditas. Until this, every release from the farm had been a variation of washed or natural.
Traceability
- Country: Colombia
- Department: Huila
- Municipality: Oporapa
- Vereda: Alto Caparrosa
- Region: Macizo Colombiano
- Producers: Edinson Argote and Luz Ángela Rojas
- Farms: Quebraditas and Chorro Alto
- Farm size: Roughly 18 hectares combined, 8 at Quebraditas and 10 at Chorro Alto
- Elevation: 1,600 to 1,850 m.a.s.l.
- Varietals: Gesha, Maragesha, Bourbon Sidra, Bourbon Pointu, Bourbon Chiroso, Bourbon Ají, Eugenioides, Wush Wush, Sudan Rume, Pacamara, Java, Arará, Ombligon, Papayo, alongside Caturra and Colombia
- Processing: Thermal shock and yeast inoculation, in washed, natural and honey styles
