David Moreno

Urrao lies within the valley of the Penderisco River, some 100 kilometers northwest of Medellín. The drive there is a breathtaking series of mountain passes above valleys that seem so impossibly vast it's easy to perceive the Andes as somehow otherworldly. Within four hours you'll arrive in Urrao to discover that the town sits within a cool and lush valley floor at 1,900 meters. In this strange place, coffee grows best at some of the lowest elevations.

Urrao is home to a variety called chiroso, once known to us as caturra chiroso. The name is Colombian slang for something that is a little stretched out, often referring to something like an old t-shirt, and maybe derivative of achiras, a popular Colombian snack with a similar eshape. Thought originally to be a locally-occurring mutation of the caturra commonly planted in the area, the variety has a few unusual physical traits—most notably, elongated fruits and seeds...