Café Uba is a Colombian coffee business model created in 2014 by Mr. Julio Cesar Madrid, a traditional coffee grower and third-generation coffee farmer in his family, dedicated to managing his family’s coffee farms. Motivated by the desire to create a coffee company different from the traditional ones in Colombia, he decided to innovate and transform the coffee production of his farms into speciality coffees on his three farms: Riviera, Milán, and Buenos Aires. He began by planting different coffee varieties and developing various fermentation types, which would lead to differentiation and high quality in the sensory profiles of the coffees.

We have focused on controlling the quality of the coffee fermentation processes, and thanks to this, we have determined the ideal fermentation times for each of the varieties, as well as the drying protocols using different systems and techniques. After years of experience in coffee fermentation, at UBA, we have designed different fermentation processes adapted to our varieties: Washed, Natural, Culturing, Nitro Fermentation, and Bioreactor.

Today, the acquired experience, combined with the good environmental conditions of our crops, has allowed us to win various quality awards for coffee both nationally and internationally, also winning in different barista championships around the world. Café Uba has three coffee farms located in the Risaralda farm in Colombia, totalling more than 200 hectares cultivated with coffee, with around one million coffee plants and more than 20 different coffee varieties.

The Riviera, Milán, and Buenos Aires farms are located in the municipalities of Pereira and Santa Rosa de Cabal, in the Risaralda farm in the region of the Coffee Cultural Landscape in the spur of the central Andes mountain range with high influence from the Santa Isabel and Ruiz snow-capped mountains. Due to this, along with the mountainous terrain and petrographic and climatic variability, these soils have not completed their pedogenetic development, meaning they are young soils. According to Soil Taxonomy, they belong to the orders Entisols, Inceptisols, and Andisols.

Our young soils, rich in organic matter, combined with the specific environment of this area, a few hours of light due to the high presence of clouds extending the fruit maturation period, and the wide thermal range, where daytime temperatures can reach up to 30 degrees Celsius and drop to 15 degrees Celsius at night, allow our coffee to develop complex and unique flavors. The Riviera farm is located at an altitude of 1,700 metres above sea level, the Milán farm at 1,400 metres above sea level, and the Buenos Aires farm at 1,500 metres above sea level.