The vodka got its start six years ago when, Byrne says, Willey paid a visit to a coffee farm in Guatemala and saw the discarded coffee fruit. “For a distiller, when you see a pile of fruit that’s not being used, you’re like, This is gold. This is filled with sugar.
Sugar is all you need to make alcohol.”
In Colombia, he says, the coffee fruit’s pulp has been usually “very marginally” used to make breads, sauces, and desserts. It’s also used as a fertilizer by many farmers, something Byrne says they realized as they worked on the vodka and which they tried to remain conscious of. To not take that away from farmers or give them additional work, Byrne explains, they landed on using leftover pulp (one step further in the coffee-processing chain) that doesn’t get used as a fertilizer. The work on the part of the farmers is limited, he says, to redirecting that leftover pulp into barrels.