Galo Paul Guerrero Villalta - Sidra Carbonic

Galo Paul Guerrero Villalta is 40 years old and only two or three years into his first productive harvest at Finca Cararango. The farm's name is straightforwardly geographic — it sits in the Cararango sector of Loja, and Galo chose the name precisely to anchor the coffee to its origin. At 1,800 masl and 2.7 hectares, the entire farm is coffee on land recovered from livestock use, with guaba, poma rosa, mandarin, and other fruit trees integrated across an agroforestry layout.
Being new means almost every decision is a forward investment. A serious drought recently damaged the local irrigation network; labour in the area can be scarce, as workers migrate toward better-paying opportunities. But Galo has built drying infrastructure quickly: greenhouse-style raised beds on metal frames, stacked three levels high, with 32 beds already operational. A washing station is being fitted. The farm depends entirely on coffee revenue, and this first meaningful harvest is the beginning of the commercial cycle he's been building toward.
For this lot, Galo chose Carbonic Maceration — sealed-tank fermentation for 72 hours, producing what he describes as notes that step outside the usual mould. He picked Sidra Bourbon for the lot because the seeds were traceable and the variety was performing well in the sector. He entered this competition to show what the Cararango zone can produce, and what careful agroforestry and controlled process can do on a young farm. It scored 88.78 — the competition's highest-scoring Carbonic Maceration lot.