The experimental wing, where every single-farm microlot is born
R&D at origin, for the roaster who reads the ferment log
Sabio Labs is the experimental side of the farm. It exists for one kind of buyer: the roaster who wants the tank temperature, the ferment hours, and which patio the lot dried on.
Every single-farm microlot we release starts here. We run the classic processes cleanly, then push past them — sealed-tank anaerobics, carbonic maceration, kombucha and SCOBY ferments, barrels that once held rum. One farm, one variety, one method at a time, and every lot cupped before it ships.
- FOCUS Single-farm microlots
- METHODS Ten process families
- CAPACITY Up to 200 lots a harvest
Every method we run, developed and scored in our own lab
Ten distinct processes, from a clean washed lot to kombucha ferments, barrel-aging, and the SCOBY-driven Jamaica natural. Each one is fermented, dried, and cupped at origin before a sample leaves.
- Grow Cloudforest farms, 1,200-1,650 masl
- Ferment Anaerobic, carbonic, kombucha, SCOBY
- Dry Patios and raised beds
- Dry mill Hull and grade in-house
- Cup Scored in our own lab
- Export Direct to your roastery
Fermented, dried, and cupped in-house
- Microlot capacity
- Up to 200 lots per harvest
- Every lot
- Cupped and logged at origin
The Sabio 12, in brief
The full lot travels twelve steps from cherry to cupping table. Here is the short version: the four stages every experimental microlot passes through.
On the farm
It begins in the plantation. Ripeness decides everything that follows.
- 01 Selective harvest Hand-picked at peak ripeness, in repeated passes through the trees.
Wet mill
Water sorts the cherries, then the ferment does the experimental work.
- 02 Ferment and dry Managed ferments — anaerobic, carbonic, kombucha — shape the cup before the lot dries to its ideal moisture.
Dry mill
Milling strips the lot back to clean green beans, then grades by size and density.
- 03 Mill and grade Hulled, screened by size, and sorted on densimetric tables.
The lab
Lots are perfected by hand and machine, then matched to a buyer.
- 04 Cup and match Every lot is scored, logged, and matched to a roaster's brief.
The discarded leaf becomes a caffeinated tea
The lab's most unlikely product isn't a coffee at all.
Wize Tea
One leaf, two crops
With Wize, the coffee leaf most farms discard becomes a caffeinated tea. A second harvest from the same tree, and a second income for the people who pick it.
How the leaf got a second life
The lab is the second generation's legacy. Enrique Sr. took over the farm in the 1970s and built Sabio's first processing lab, the place that put the family's coffee on the specialty map. Three generations in, that same instinct — find the value in what the tree already gives — is what turned a discarded leaf into a crop.
Coffee leaves are picked, wilted, and dried much the way tea is, then blended and brewed as Wize. It runs out of the same farm and the same hands that pick the cherries, and it is entirely the lab's doing.
How the mark came to be
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The mask
El Güegüense, and its trickster mule
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The geometry
Its colors and forms, abstracted
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The mark
The mule's head, in four colors
Every experiment ends in a lot on the table
Browse the single-farm microlots the lab is releasing this harvest.
Browse the microlotsRequest a microlot sample
Tell us what you are sourcing for. We send small-lot samples, cupping notes, and the processing data behind each lot. We reply within two business days.