"Welcome to Five Senses Coffee"

Do you remember those funky, printed, refracting images you had as a kid that changed to a different image depending on the angle you looked at it? I know I had a few – mostly comprising superheroes in a “ready for action” pose. Then, with a tilt of the page, they adopted a body-busting “Ka-pow!” pose.

Colombia reminds me of those images for the simple reason that from pretty much whatever angle you look at the country, you see something very different. There is no doubt that Colombia comes with a reputation. Amongst many other things it has a reputation for coffee, for its Spanish history and for its recent battles with the guerrillas who are trying to achieve economic control and political influence through the drug trade. On one hand, one could be forgiven for seeing a country still heavily afflicted by the drug lords – there are about ten thousand guerrillas and very large tracts of land still controlled by them. On the other hand, viewing this with the benefit of a bit of knowledge of recent history, you would probably see a country no longer gripped by fear of the drug cartels, and a country which has gained the ascendancy over them, reducing the number of guerrillas from eighty thousand in 2000 to about ten thousand in 2011.

So what about the common world view of Colombian coffee? Firstly, everyone seems to know that coffee and Colombia are tightly linked. I bet if I asked anyone on the street which countries produced coffee, most would include Colombia near the top of their lists. Colombia has done a spectacular job over the last few decades and, more recently, with the Juan Valdez campaign promoting itself as a major coffee producing nation. Colombia has also worked very hard to forge a common global understanding of what Colombian coffee should taste like. It has done this through an organisation known as the The Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia (English: National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia). The FNC started off as a grass roots organisation – essentially a union of coffee farmers who understood the concept of strength through numbers, and who eventually became the ordained Colombian authority on everything to do with coffee. At some point in the past, the FNC decided that Colombian coffee should have just one identifiable profile. They established regimes which forced farmers to abandon any individualisation of flavour profiles through the use of different growing, harvesting and post-production processing techniques. Farmers were basically unable to produce coffee that fell outside the flavour parameters set by the FNC. The result was that the flavour profile of Colombian coffee became homogenised and predictable, but ultimately still very marketable.

Could we view the story of Colombian coffee as a success? I suppose in terms of achieving what they set out to do, the FNC were resoundingly successful – Colombian coffee was unmistakable in its flavour profile and varied very little from year to year. But there were, and still are, some downsides to this policy. Firstly, farmers started to strive tirelessly for mediocrity. The FNC policy was an active disincentive for farmers to experiment and produce coffee that was even a little bit left of centre. If they did, the FNC would reject it, so it couldn’t be exported. Secondly, other producing countries, unencumbered by prescribed flavour parameters, experimented and explored both the potential of varietals and harvesting and processing techniques, creating a farming/producing culture which grew in knowledge and was responsive to the growing market of the specialty coffee buyer. They thereby gained ground and reputation amongst the specialty consumers. Thirdly, the world view of what Colombian coffee tasted like became (and to a certain extent still is) embedded in the minds of most of the worlds’ coffee buyers – not so much a problem when that was what the FNC wanted, but now it’s a very big problem, because the FNC have had a change of heart!

The FNC now see the value of allowing farmers to mix it up (so to speak) and, as a consequence, there is a movement afoot by a few farmers, co-operatives and exporters in Colombia to hop onto the specialty train and respond to the desire by the growing number of consumers across the world for unique, interesting and excellent coffees. In embarking on this journey, they are well aware that they need to battle against the global perception of what their coffee will taste like – a consequence of the FNC’s success in communicating just this – and play a massive game of catch up in the realm of knowledge. It’s going to be a tough gig for them!

We have welcomed the invitation by some of these Colombian growers and exporters to be a part of this journey with them. In partnership with Atlas coffee (Seattle) and Racafe (Colombia) Five Senses is playing an active role in bringing some of these Colombian New World coffees to you. We think that you, the Australian specialty coffee consumer, are amongst the most coffee-educated consumers in the world. The reception that some of these new Colombian coffees have received from you already has been overwhelming, and has motivated us to escalate our involvement in this journey by supporting more Colombian producers and bringing more of their coffee to you. As part of all of this, we’ve just come back from another trip to Colombia. We visited lots of farmers, but spent most of our time with a grower group in Monserrate, and also at a farm called La Fragua. Excellent people growing excellent coffee – and we’re bringing it back here to Australia for you to enjoy.

We’ve written a bit more about each of these producers in our blog (read from the oldest post “An agent of change” up). It’s worth having a read and getting introduced to them. I’m sure that what you find out about them and what you eventually end up tasting from them, may change your perception of Colombian coffee forever. “Ka-Pow!”