Risaralda, Colombia
UBA
An estate that works like a processing laboratory
Café Uba is a Colombian estate whose identity sits in the fermentation room as much as the field. Founded in 2014 by third-generation producers Julio César Madrid and Julio Andrés Quiceno, it consolidates the output of three family farms in Risaralda — La Riviera, Milán and Buenos Aires — and channels it through a single, tightly controlled processing programme. Café Uba is the trademarked brand of Café Fino SAS, based in Dosquebradas in Colombia's coffee axis. The starting point matters because it explains where the work is concentrated: Uba was built not only to grow good coffee, but to function as a processing laboratory, with the cup shaped as much by what happens after picking as by what happens on the tree.
How it developed
Madrid comes from a family of coffee growers with three generations behind him, and Café Uba was started with a deliberate aim — to do something other than the conventional Colombian coffee business around it. The decision that defines the operation was to centralise production from the three farms rather than sell them separately. That made it possible to invest in infrastructure most individual producers cannot reach: bioreactors, controlled fermentation tanks and precise drying facilities. The result is a structure built for one purpose — to experiment with fermentation and drying systematically, and to repeat the results.
The working logic
The core principle is that fermentation is a design stage, not an afterthought. Where many farms record little beyond "washed" or "natural", Uba treats post-harvest work as the place a distinctive coffee is actually made, and builds a defined process around each lot rather than applying one house recipe. Two processes carry the Uba name: Culturing and Nitro fermentation, both developed at Finca Milán. The point of designing fermentation this closely is control and repeatability — so the character in the cup can be traced to a decision, and so a coffee tastes the same from one batch to the next. The trade-off is the discipline it demands: measured variables, monitored tanks, and a willingness to keep adjusting rather than settle.
How the work is done
Uba's signature Nitro process gives a clear picture of the approach. Pulped coffee is placed into a bioreactor with fruit must and selected starter cultures, with the headspace atmosphere actively managed; the fermentation can be staged after a measured oxidation in cherry, then followed by structured drying and stabilisation. This is co-fermentation in the precise sense — fruit musts such as passionfruit, banana, citrus and watermelon introduced alongside the cultures to shape microbial activity, not to flavour the bean superficially. The aim is a cup that reads as fruit-forward and clear at once, where the process is doing real work without tipping into the muddled or artificial. Across the farms, Uba also runs more conventional methods — washed, natural, honey, anaerobic, carbonic maceration and double fermentation — so the experimental work sits on a base of solid, repeatable processing rather than novelty alone.
The people and the farms
Madrid and Quiceno hold the system together; their contribution is method more than lineage. Finca Milán, in the village of Betulia near Pereira, has produced coffee since 1982 and now serves as Uba's innovation farm, where new processes are tested before being scaled across the operation. Finca Buenos Aires, in the village of El Hogar, has made specialty coffee since 1998. La Riviera sits highest of the three. Together the farms run to more than 200 hectares and around a million plants. The point for a reader is not the scale but the structure: a family operation organised so that processing research can be developed on one farm and applied with consistency across the rest.
Recognition
Uba's fermentation work has been tested in the most demanding setting in the industry — the competition stage. Coffees from Finca Milán have reached the World Barista Championship podium in consecutive years, taking bronze and then silver. In 2023, the runner-up, Italian barista Daniele Ricci, competed with Café Uba's Finca Milán coffee, including a Caturra Nitro. That matters here for a specific reason: it places Uba's processing in front of palates judging clarity and precision under pressure, where a coffee that relied on novelty alone would not survive. It is part of why Uba is now consistently cited by importers and roasters as one of the leading names in Colombia's experimental fermentation movement.
Glass and Uba
This season, we worked with Café Uba to document their story, coordinated with Andrés Quiceno over WhatsApp, and the team opened the farms to a photographer we sent — stills and drone footage of the sites and the work behind the coffee. We are grateful for that access. We also rate the way Uba labels its coffees, naming the process plainly rather than hiding it behind a vague “experimental” tag.
The competition lot we selected from Uba shows the strength of this work at its best: expressive, clean and technically impressive. It is not a coffee we chose despite the processing; it is a coffee we chose because the processing clearly achieved something remarkable.
That is why the honest next step — for Uba, and for Colombian producers working this way more broadly — is to go further still: to be as open about the process itself as they are about the result. Co-fermentation is one of the least explained areas in specialty coffee, and the farms leading it are best placed to set the standard. Sharing which musts, which cultures, and which fermentation and drying decisions shaped each lot is what would let a roaster, and a customer, fully understand what they are tasting.
Why this matters
Co-fermentation is one of the fastest-growing areas in specialty coffee, and Café Uba is one of the clearest examples of how far it has been taken. The reason to understand a producer like this is not that every lot will reach our shelves, but that it shows where processing is heading: fermentation treated as a design stage, built on bioreactors, starter cultures and staged drying rather than instinct. Naming these processes honestly — Culturing, Nitro — is a real step, and one many producers still skip.
Looking closely at a farm like Uba makes an advanced, often opaque part of the industry more legible. It shows both the promise of this style of processing and the responsibility that comes with it: if fermentation is becoming a central part of how flavour is designed, then transparency around that work needs to evolve with it.