Colombia Cauca Suukala

Suukala, "sugary to taste"

Suukala coffees are produced by expert growers who invest extra care into special harvests: patience, passion, and hard work distilled into every lot. It's our 85+ profile, reserved for coffees that stand out for their sweetness and complexity.

Since Siruma began working in the region in 2017, we've developed a shared language with the farmers we partner with by training them to evaluate their own coffee: cupping, scoring, and matching lots to the profiles and price points our clients are looking for. Out of these recurring needs, we built a set of categories that simplify community lots into clear flavor profiles and cup scores.

This matters because of a power imbalance that's common in farmer exporter relationships: many communities don't have their own labs or in house cuppers, and some exporters take advantage of that gap, paying growers for a lower scoring coffee while selling it on to clients at a premium score. The foundation of our categories is trust, built on honest cupping feedback and real cupping knowledge at the community level. When a community's coffee cups higher than expected, we tell them, and we pay the higher price. Every lot stays traceable back to its specific association or cooperative.

About ACC

This lot comes from ACC, an association of coffee growers from central Cauca, in southern Colombia. Founded in 2016 in Piendamó, ACC was created to improve coffee quality across the region, with an impact reaching from the crop itself all the way through to delivery.

The association traces back to Robinson Rivera, a young coffee producer from Piendamó who, despite limited resources and not having finished middle school, set out to change the trajectory of the people around him — many of whom were tied up in the illegal coca trade. Robinson started the association to add value to his neighbors' coffee, so that a better income from coffee could eventually make swapping coca for coffee trees a real choice. That vision became the Association of Coffee Growers from Central Cauca for Peace in 2016.

Today ACC has 77 associates, farming an average of 1.5 hectares each at altitudes between 1,700 and 2,100 meters above sea level. The association supports its members with quality analysis and guidance, backed by a certified Q grader on staff and a small in house QC lab. Robinson and his brother have also built their own small wet mill by hand, where they process advanced fermentation naturals and honeys, adding value to cherries that growers occasionally bring in beyond the standard washed process.