Colombia Origin Trip: Sourcing Speciality Coffee - Day 8

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 8 – Monday 16th May

A late start today, we were meeting at 8am!

However, those bells were chiming at 5am again, it’s a good job I’m a morning person. 

After a another negative covid test, I headed down to breakfast at the hotel. The last morning, the last breakfast, I had my heart set on my last breakfast broth, this didn’t arrive, I had to make do with a selection of super fresh fruit and a made-to-order omelette.

After breakfast, we all checked out and headed to CENCOIC HQ to see their warehouse and QC labs. The two Covid cases had remained in isolation in the hotel as to not spread anything.

At CENCOIC HQ we were greeted by Hernan and Coop manager Juan Carlos Guampe. It was great to see Juan Carlos again, and it was lovely that he recognised me from their visit to Sheffield in September 2019.

After a quick look around we were treated to a brilliant coffee cupping. 14 coffees from across the CENCOIC estate, all very different but all delicious in their own ways. We cupped coffees from the farms we visited yesterday, It’s such an amazing feeling to be trying the coffee from a farm I visited the previous day, I love this job.

After the cupping and analysis, the CENCOIC team had made lunch, my first tamales of the trip. A dish made up of meat, veg, egg and corn mixed and then cooked inside a banana leaf, it was really tasty. Nicer than they look once you remove the banana leaf.

After the quick lunch we had a sit down and Elisabeth joined us. Via interpreter Priscilla, the CENCOIC team thanked us for the visit and explained why it meant so much we go out and see them, the importance of ongoing relations and the value we add to them as coffee producers.

It was really touching hearing the guys talk and how sincere they were and what it meant, brilliant that the coffee we buys does make a difference to people at origin, its how it should be.

We use coffee from CENCOIC in our Cooling Towers blend which is made up of Costa Rican and Colombian coffee. If you’d like to buy a bag of Cooling Towers, click here. Likewise, you can find more about CENCOIC and the great work they do, here.

After saying our goodbyes we headed to Popayan airport, now Popayan airport is rather small, we were greeted by security before entering the terminal who had a print out of all passengers flying that day, if you ain’t on the list, you ain’t coming in!

We boarded and duly landed in Bogota, there was time to kill as our UK flight was not for another 7 hours but weary from the previous 10 days we merely mulled about the airport until it was time to come home. It was a shame I didn’t get to see Bogota but didn’t feel I had the time to do it remotely properly so decided against it, I will hopefully return one day though.

We then boarded the plane at headed back to the UK.

Steve Hampshire

Head of Coffee