A new edition of Sugar Rush — and this one might be our favourite yet. For those who know the concept: Sugar Rush is our permanent Extra coffee, built around one idea — a cup so sweet, so vivid, and so unapologetically fruity that it tastes like the best kind of indulgence. Every edition, we look for a coffee that delivers exactly that. This time, we found it at El Rubí.
Wilder Lazo is a producer we've come to genuinely admire. His background is unusual: he trained as a veterinarian, specializing in livestock. It was only in 2016 — when coffee prices were falling and his father fell seriously ill — that he decided to step in and take over the family farm together with his brother Segundo and Heiner Lasso. The coffees they were producing at the time scored between 80 and 83 points. Good, but not what the farm was capable of.
Wilder brought his scientific mindset to bear. He started analyzing soil samples, neutralizing pH levels, and applying targeted nutrients to make more of what the land could offer — an approach he calls precision agriculture. The results speak for themselves: El Rubí now consistently produces some of the most expressive lots coming out of Huila.
This particular lot is something even more special. The Sidamo Heirloom variety grown here is the result of a happy experiment: Wilder and his exporter, our friend Nikolai Fürst of Desarrolladores Café, managed to germinate a sample of Ethiopian green coffee and successfully plant it in Colombian soil. There are currently just 1,200 trees growing at El Rubí — and this is one of the first real harvests. What grows from that convergence is something genuinely new: the floral aromatic intensity of an Ethiopian heirloom, anchored by a creamy Colombian body.