In Colombia’s coffee regions the women who pick the coffee are called chapoleras: they arrive with the harvest, like the butterflies, the chapolas. That is why every coffee in the brand is a butterfly and every bag is a collection card.
The coffee comes from Leiva, in northern Nariño, known as the cradle of the wind: the town sits on a ridge and on many mornings the clouds stay below it. The four species of the collection grow there, between 1,600 and 1,900 metres.
Every bag says where it was harvested, at what altitude and who picked it.
The identity comes from how the coffee is grown, not from a postcard. We tell it in three ideas that return on the bag, the website and every coffee’s sheet.
Clouds and plantain trees filter the sun. The leaf works without stress and the cherry ripens evenly.
With cool mornings the cherry takes longer to turn red and builds up sugar: hence the notes of panela and caramel.
The canyon wind clears the moisture from the rows after every rain and helps the cherry reach harvest healthy.
Each coffee is named after a butterfly that flies in the coffee farms of southern Colombia. The sheet on the bag is the same on the website and for cafés: species, altitude, process, notes and who picked it.
Jasmine · Bergamot · Black tea · White peach
The butterfly most often seen in Nariño’s coffee rows, for the most delicate coffee in the collection.
Cacao nibs · Wild blackberry · Red wine
The postman’s red and black reads in the cup: red fruit and cacao.
Panela · Red apple · Toasted almond
It flies at dusk, the hour of the second cup: sweet and round.
Light panela · Vanilla · Orange peel
Transparent wings for the coffee we took the caffeine out of, and nothing else.
Caramel · Panela · Mandarin
The only bag without a butterfly: the neighbour of the coffee rows, engraved in one ink with the cinnamon of its collar.
Arabica coffee from Leiva, Nariño, grown between 1,600 and 1,900 m a.s.l. Studio concept: pickers, neighbouring farms and scores are illustrative.
Before drawing anything we walked the farm and noted what lives around the coffee. Each find became a card, like the butterflies, and the special edition and the fungi series came from there.
It is everywhere in Leiva: in the coffee bushes, on the fences and on the town’s roofs. It sings before sunrise. It is the face of the special edition.
Fruit at three stages on the same branch: the reason it is picked in several passes.
The water that comes down the mountain and washes the coffee before drying.
The first frame of the brand film: a drone flies through the coffee rows after a morpho until it rises above the clouds.
If the butterfly marks the coffee, the fungus marks the shade that protects it: it only appears where the wood stays damp and the forest is alive. It is Chapola’s second collection, for limited editions and for the palette.
We found it on a shade tree at the edge of the coffee rows. It is a jelly fungus that only appears where the wood stays damp: a sign that the forest protecting the coffee is alive.
No. 10Fuchsia cups on fallen branches. Its pink joins the palette as a limited-edition accent.
No. 11A red ear on the coffee bush’s dry branches. The brand’s cherry red has its twin here.
No. 12Wine-red parasols the size of a fingernail, in the coffee rows’ leaf litter.
No. 09The wood ear against the light: the special edition’s cinnamon comes from this colour.
A four-bean symbol that is also a butterfly, a name in Bodoni spaced like a museum label, and a data sheet repeated identically on the bag, the website and in cafés.
Four coffee beans with their S-shaped groove form the wings. It works at 16 px and as the bag’s seal.
The Bodoni of natural history collections, open like the label on a specimen box.
The collection’s, plus the special edition’s cinnamon: the sparrow’s collar and the colour of the wood ear.
Italics for each species, a grotesque for the brand, a mono for the data sheet.
100% organic arabica from Finca La Esperanza, in Leiva. Chapola’s only bag without a butterfly: the front is the sparrow engraving, the side says where it comes from and how it tastes, and the back tells the farm’s story.
The home page opens with the morpho, the collection is chosen by butterfly and every coffee has its full sheet before the buy button. On a phone, the same journey works with one thumb.
Arabica from Nariño grown at 1,600 to 1,900 metres. Every bag says where, at what altitude and who picked it.
SEE THE COLLECTIONN.º 01 MorphoGeisha · COP 68,000N.º 02 HeliconiusNatural Castillo · COP 52,000N.º 03 CaligoHoney Caturra · COP 46,000N.º 04 GretaDecaf · COP 48,000Finca La Esperanza, 100% organic. Caramel notes, medium intensity. One harvest, while it lasts.
MEET IT100% organic arabica from Finca La Esperanza, washed with a long fermentation. Sweet with panela and caramel, with a soft mandarin finish.
MorphoCOP 68,000GretaCOP 48,000Everything was redone as a production: macro and wide-aperture lenses, shallow depth of field and the intense colour of the cloud forest.