"Welcome to Five Senses Coffee"

Jen and Dean spent a couple weeks in Colombia during the coffee harvest earlier this year. The idea was to see firsthand what goes on behind the scenes with one of our most popular origin offerings. Jen brings us an account of their time in the Colombian Andes.

Our flight is epic and the trip from Depensar to Colombia becomes a blur of airline food, customs and immigration, airport lounges and a combined total travel time of 56 hours — we are spent! However, our first glimpses of Bogotá (Colombia’s biggest city) give us renewed energy as we see the unknown for the first time. It’s very green, very mountainous, and very lush. We settle in quickly and while Dean motors on to join the others for dinner and beers, I immediately succumb to jet lag.

The next morning we met the entire crew: Craig and Chris from Atlas Coffee, our high-end green bean broker based in the US; Sebastian, who is representing the exporters; Dave, a wholesale roaster from Boise,Idaho; and Colleen Duhamel, a green bean buyer from Café Grumpy in Brooklyn, New York. We all said g’day, grabbed our bags and headed to the domestic airport. We catch yet another flight, but this time we are headed for Neiva, the capital of the department of Huila, a very well recognised coffee region. Neiva is our first real glimpse of a more traditional Colombia, far removed from big city life in Bogotá.

From here we take the typical car ride to the coffee farms: breakneck speeds, winding roads, zero suspension … it’s strange that none of us are even remotely concerned, out here this all feels very normal. We stop roadside along the way to test the local goodies. We all tentatively pick at our choices and I pray that this cheesy bun is not my last, getting sick is miserable. I gaze out the window for the rest of the trip. As I try to suppress my motion sickness, I see fields of tobacco, Lou Lou (a fruit that looks like tomato and tastes like Kiwi) and cotton.

We eventually roll up to the tiny town of La Plata, which, to our surprise is in full festival mode. The celebrations of San Pedro and San Juan begin every night at 4:00 A.M. and continues until alborada (dawn) for our entire week’s stay. Horses, loud speakers, fire crackers, music and full-on celebrations outside our windows every night! It’s so loud it’s laughable and we all manage in our own way to get caught up in the moment and enjoy the experience.

To put things into geographical perspective, Colombia is in South America and shares a border with five other countries. Panama (Central America) is located to the northwest, Venezuela to the northeast, Ecuador to the southwest, Peru is directly south and Brazil is southeast. Most Colombian coffee is grown in the northwest, which is also happens to be home to the Andes mountain range. Colombia is considered to reside within the Northern Andes, where it is then split into three parallel regions referred to as the western, central and eastern ranges The Northern Andes then continue through Venezuela and end.

From what I could gather, although Colombians are close to so many other countries, it doesn’t seem common practice to drive across borders and travel outside of Colombia. Sebastian mentioned that he has travelled to the US and UK on various occasions to represent exporters at Specialty Coffee Association events.

The department of Huila (where we are spending most of our time) is nestled between the central and eastern mountain range, so we were surrounded at all times by the Andes — beautiful. Our base for the week is the city of La Plata and on one occasion we travel to meet the farmers in Monseratte. To get there, we take a two hour drive in Willys (old 1960’s jeeps) and then travel the last leg on horseback. Monseratte is breathtaking, a tiny community in the Andes with their chapel perched on its highest peak. It’s such an incredible view and we are literally surrounded by coffee farms, some scaling the very steep mountainside. The farmers really turn it up, welcoming us with Asado Huilensa (a traditional meal from Huila) and some lovely live and very local music.

Later in the afternoon, we retreat to the town hall and watch on as Atlas, Sebastian and the farmers negotiate over quality and price. Nobody is getting a handout here, people work hard and they are rewarded for it. This feels like a genuine business transaction and a relationship that is sustainable and viable for everyone involved.

We love our day in Monseratte. We hang out with the locals, visit some farms and watch 10 year olds gallop their horses through the main streets. Later we head back to La Plata to spend the next three days cupping and grading all the Monseratte lots submitted by the farmers, most of whom we have just met.

In total I think we are cupping around 40 lots, and in the end we narrow them down to the top 10 micro lots. The coffees are outstanding and we labour over them very seriously. The farmers of the top five coffees win prizes that include a higher price per pound, cash bonuses and a goody bag full of coffee merchandise (including some Five Senses polo shirts). We negotiate along with all the other buyers and select our top lots for purchase.

We concluded our visit with a soccer game. This is an annual tradition — gringos against the Monseratte kids, with the parents watching. The kids beat us fair and square, which was scary, because I’m pretty certain none of them were older than 10 years old!

From here, we drive to Neiva where Dean, Craig, Colleen and Sebastian start making their way home. Chris, Dave, Oscar, Luis and I stay behind for an extended tour of Huila, an opportunity I definitely don’t want to miss. I think that these tours into the heart of country and culture, conducted by the local people, are the most highly underrated benefit of traveling to coffee growing regions. We spent the whole day driving, taking back roads past coffee farms, stopping in small towns, mills and coffee trading posts, as well as at some interesting farms.

The idea is not to rush through the trip, but to experience the region and see for ourselves how much it has to offer. We drive through Campoalgre, Gigante, Garzon, Guadulupe, Acevado and Timana (where the Del Obispo originates), then on to Pitalito and San Agustin (where Finca Buenavista is found, winner of the SCAA Coffee of the Year award).

We tour the ruins in San Augustin and eat guinea pig (well — actually, I said no to Mr. Cuy). We stay over in San Augustin and then make the trip back to Neiva via different a different route.

The tour of Huila is exciting. It’s a region I’ve heard so much about and everything seems to make so much more sense in person. There are lots of military personnel around and people driving by would give them the thumbs up as a sign of gratitude for their presence and protection. Colombia has a long history of corrupt guerrillas and at one point (less than 10 years ago), internal travel along these roads would not have been possible. After chatting with Luis, it sounds like Colombia is well on its way to being a much safer, happier place for its people and visitors.

There are still some dangers (like in any place) and this is another reason I was happy to be travelling with people who were not only funny, kind and informative, but who know their country well and kept us silly tourists from doing anything rash! I later found out that going to Monseratte every day (near the border of Cauca) was not advisable. They explained that it was not wise to see gringos going up, gringos going down, gringos going up, gringos going down — I get a good laugh out of that!

I spend my last day in Bogotá visiting the RACAFE office. RACAFE is a Colombian specialty coffee roaster and wholesaler who happened to take first place at Specialty Coffee Association of America’s (SCAA) 2008 Roasters Guild Coffee of the Year Competition. I take a tour of the office and am most impressed by Sebastian and Luis’s coffee trading office. They buy and sell over a million bags of Colombian coffee every year, and are acutely aware of every move in the market. Their coffee lab was very impressive with a shiny two group La Marzocco, Mazzer grinders, a four barrel Probat sample roaster, every single filter vessel in existence, and a well set up cupping table.

Hubert, who works for RACAFE, was a judge in the Monseratte competition, is a licensed Q grader and heads up quality control and grading for their lab. Seeing coffee traded on this level is a good reminder of how small the specialty industry really is. I had a good talk with Sebastian, who explained how they view the benefits of specialty coffee and the commitments they see themselves making to explore the intricate world of high end Colombian coffees.

We poured over the map of Colombia and Sebastian pointed out areas of interest. He explained how the regions have shifted and how places like Huila, Tolima and Cauca (amongst others) have huge potential. It’s about having people who know the region, with time to explore and develop relationships. There is so much untapped potential in the coffee world, with a guarantee of so much more to learn and experience in years to come.

With bad weather and smaller crops this year, getting the coffees we want out of Colombia is becoming a difficult challenge. By working with Atlas and RACAFE, we are doing our best to keep moving forward with Monseratte coffee. At this point we have some micro-lots on the way and hopefully more from this region in the future.