Colombia Origin Trip: Sourcing Speciality Coffee - Day 4

Welcome to Steve's personal blog from his origin trip to Colombia, where he spent 10 days travelling the country sourcing speciality coffee.

His blog covers his thought and feelings throughout and introduces you to some of the most amazing people/organisations that make up the coffee industry.

Day 4 – Thursday 12th May

Once again my Colombian brain did not want to sleep past 4:30, so a nice early start again.

This did work in my favour today as I got to Facetime home and speak to the better half and my little boy. This is now the longest I’ve gone without seeing Seth, so it was lovely to see him and his wonderful mummy.

The first outing this morning was to see a small Cooperative group called Acedga, based in the “near” by town of Gaitania. I think my definition of near and Hernans is slightly different.

After another dicey 90 mins in the car up the steepest, bumpy, road/no road, out of nowhere popped up Gaitania. A decent sized town but I find it incredible how they have developed this place with the access routes they have, its crazy. The pictures and my words do not do this justice, honestly, it is insane.

We were greeted by Virginia Suarez, legal and head of sales for the Acedga group, she took us to a small place for breakfast, it is actually a woman’s house who uses it as a restaurant, incredible.

After breakie we had a tour of their provisional buying station and QC lab. They are currently renovating their own warehouse using monies received from the Fair Trade premiums. Here we met Acedga founder, Uriel Huerfia and local QC expert Madri Sanchez.

After a small tour we were met by Cup of Excellence winner Astrid Medina, Astrid won the CoE in 2015 and is well revered as a farmer in Colombia. I had a great conversation (vis Hernan) with Astrid about World Champion barista Diego Campos.

I was intrigued if the farmer was interested in the final barista level of coffee, it turns out they are, and even more incredible, Diego & Astrid are friends and do some work together. It was such a lovely feeling to be involved in this conversation as you could see the joy in Astrid’s face when talking about coffee (even via a translator).

I better mention know at this point we had some S&D within the group, luckily both Jacob and myself were unaffected but for some, last night was rough. Anyway, as a smaller group we ventured out and back in a 4×4 and headed towards farm Café Leona and La Esperanza.

We had a walk around Café Leona’s processing plant, amazing seeing the different styles farmers use. Here, they actually pulp the cherries on a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, these are then all mixed and left for a further two days before being washed and then either mechanically or air dried. Both Jacob and myself had a go at raking the drying parchment coffee, harder than it looks : )

We were then treated to some fried halloumi, hot Chocolate and sweet bread, the hosting levels of these farmers in incredible.

From Café Leona we were back in 4×4 and off to La Esperanza, owned and farmed by Carlos Enrique Osorio, after a short drive we hopped out and had the most incredible 20 minute walk through the rainforest to get to the farm. What an experience, I honestly felt like an explorer on an expedition. Truly breath-taking.

To make this even more exciting, the heavens opened and the rain came in. Thick heavy rain, it really didn’t matter though, nothing could dampen my mood. Crossing the river on a wet wooden log bridge was great fun if not a little dangerous.

If this wasn’t enough, the farm was incredible, the base was at 1600 masl but went up to around 1950 masl. They had many different varietals on the farm, Typica, Pink bourbon, yellow Cattura, Geisha plus more. It was such an experience to taste the difference in cherries so close to one another, a coffee geek's dream come true.

On La Esperanza they also grew lemon/mandarin hybrids and bananas. The fruit was incredible, so different to anything we have in the UK, so sweet, so fresh, beautiful.

After a brew at 1600 masl, and a little tour of the farm we headed back towards Gaitania. On the walk back to the 4×4, the sun came out and again the experience was amazing.

Back at Gaitania, we were treated to a rice and chicken dinner, lovely fresh flavours, exceptional.

From Gaitania we said our goodbyes to Acedga and headed out to meet Camille from Asopep at Asopep HQ. A tour of the mill and interestingly a tour of their own fertilizer facility. They create organic fertilizers from waste products from the coffee process and then use them across the 304 farms on their estates.

After a look at the process we headed up to the auditorium where the local kids put on a small musical performance for our benefit. Part of the Asopep social commitment is to try and engage with the local children and give them things to do after school, at Asopep they offer music, sports, dance and cooking classes for the children. This helps engage the world of coffee with the children and helps to keeps away from gang recruitment.

The children performed four traditional Tolima songs, it was great to watch and to listen to. A lot of effort had gone into these and it was very much appreciated. During the concert we were treated to some lovely coffees from different brew methods by the kids in the barista school.

After the concert, Camillia gave a small presentation on the coop and what they do in the area. They have safe places for children and woman to learn, they have educational classes for all, they really do seem to give back to the community. In 2017 Diego Campos had been up to run some barista classes for the kids.

As well as the societal side, Asopep seem to be experts in reaching out for donations to help fund things like the building of the QC lab, warehouse, 4G football pitch, barista equipment, auditorium, demo kitchen, soil analysis station, and much more.

They have been gifted donations from small companies all the way up to the European Space Agency, Fair Trade foundation and even the Vatican City. Keep doing what you are doing Asopep, I was blown away…

From here we headed back to the hotel, with a lot of the group flagging, a brave bunch of 4 headed into Planadas for dinner, a couple of cerveza and a local pizza type dish topped off the most remarkable day.

Bravo Tolima, Bravo

Steve Hampshire

Head of Coffee