Monkaaba

About the Coffee

Monkaaba is a smallholder sourcing project based in San Agustin, Colombia, operating as a sister company to Semilla. It was built around a straightforward idea: give smallholder farmers access to tools and information that the conventional coffee supply chain typically keeps out of reach. The coffees in this blend come from various small farms growing at 1,650 to 1,900 meters above sea level, with producers working across varietals including Castillo, Pink Bourbon, Colombia, Papayo, Catimor, and Tabi.

Esnaider Ortega-Gomez and Didier Ortega of Monkaaba named this particular blend La Colmena, Spanish for "the beehive," and the name reflects how the project works. Each lot in the blend comes from younger growers or producers making their first attempt at processing a coffee for microlot sale. Individually, those lots may not meet the bar for standalone specialty sale. Together, they do. Semilla covers the costs of running an open-access cupping laboratory and pays salaries to smallholders working as roasters, accountants, and warehouse managers in the bodega. This means growers can cup their own coffees, receive direct feedback, and actually understand what their coffee tastes like before it leaves the farm, something most producers in the conventional system never get.

Monkaaba also shares supply chain information that is rarely passed down to growers: what their coffee costs to the buyer, how long it takes to reach North America or Europe, and who the final clients are. Many of the growers who first submitted coffee to La Colmena have since achieved their own microlot, which points to the project doing exactly what it set out to do. There is also one dedicated buyer for everyone in the network, which gives smallholders a stable, trusted relationship rather than the uncertainty of the open commodity market.

About Eclipse

Eclipse Coffee Roasters was founded in 2014 in Canmore, Alberta. The roastery was built on a sourcing approach that prioritizes environmental and social responsibility: every coffee goes through an independent screening process before Eclipse commits to buying it, and the roastery pays above market price to the farms it works with.

Eclipse roasts to order, so coffee ships fresh rather than sitting in inventory. They carry around 10 to 15 coffees at any given time, roasted to reflect the natural characteristics of each origin rather than pushed toward a house style. Their work has been recognized in roasting competitions across North America.