BeanScene Magazine

It started with a rude awakening. The sound was piercing and travelled throughout every corner of the valley. I didn’t know what it was at first, but as I became more alert (it was 5am) the realisation dawned that this loud, eerie, squealing sound was a pig.

“What is that noise?” said a shocked Thomas Schweiger, the German Barista Champion and 12th in the WBC, who I was sleeping next to. “They are killing the pig for our breakfast,” I said in jest. The night before we had been patting the pig and it was clearly used to being around humans. Everybody laughed. About 30 minutes later we were walking to our dining room for breakfast and three men and an eight year old girl had the dead pig roasting over a fire.

It was the first morning of our expedition and we realised straight away that our hosts were certainly going to give us an adventure. Myself and six other top world baristas, along with some Peruvian baristas, were in the jungle on a farm called La Encanada. It is situated in the far north eastern corner of Peru on the edge of the Amazon. The closest town is Rioja, about 40 minutes drive from the farm. The nearest major city is Tarapoto -  a four hour hour drive from the farm. Tarapoto is a one and a half hour flight from the capital, Lima. It’s a long way from home - 36 hours of travel - and we are here to participate in an event called Seed to Cup Barista Origin Adventure, organised and run by the Sustainable Harvest company. The adventure is a Survivor-style event where 10 baristas live on a farm at origin. The 10 are split into two teams of five and given coffee farming challenges over five days.

My fellow challenge travellers were Fabrizio Sencion, 2009 champion, Mexico; Haruna Murayama, 2010 World Latte Art Champion, Japan; Harryson Niera, Cafe y Cacao Barista, Peru; Soren Stiller Markussen, 2010 Barista Champion, Denmark; Midori Niikura, Sustainable Harvest Japanese Translator; Raul Rodas, 2010 champion, Guatemala; Stefanos Domatiotis,  2010 champion, Greece; Kyle Straw, 2010 champion, Canada; Thomas Schweiger, 2010 champion, Germany; Ricardo Cardenas, 2010 champion, Mexico and; Karen Pisconte de Dominguez, 2010 Peru Finalist.

We also had some Sustainable Harvest staff to run the event, a photographer and videographer, Carmen our cook, Dionicio the farm owner and Fedmin the farm manager. We lived with the locals and ate with the locals. The jungle provides plenty of food - mangoes, coconuts, cocoa, fish from the river, chickens and pigs. Over the five days we had to pick coffee, build a coffee drying bed, prepare coffee at the markets in Rioja, visit the village near Finca La Encanada and buy coffee parchment. Then we have to carry the coffee in parchment on our backs and on a donkey to the next village along the rough dirt track.

Picking Day
It was the end of the season and not a lot of coffee was left on the trees. All the fruit had to come off. We had two bags each - one for the good cherries and one for the bad. After two hours, my group had about five kilograms, resulting in about two and a half kilograms of green beans. The trees were wet, the weather very humid and the hills very steep. It had the desired effect. We will look at coffee with a whole new level of respect for those who pick it for us year in and year out.

Market Coffee Making
After the 40 minute drive, we entered the town in five modern four wheel drive utes. A rare sight in these parts and it created a spectacle. We were given a small table, two kettles, handheld coffee grinders, water, some filter paper and two small pour over coffee brewers. The idea was to make coffee for people who had no idea how good Peruvian coffee can taste. Most of the town’s inhabitants grow coffee for a living and we were making them coffee! The locals loved it and lined up to buy a cup. The interaction was fantastic. Who were we, why were we there? At the end of it, they wanted us to return the following week.

Coffee Drying Bed
We were handed wood, a saw, a couple of hammers and nails and told to copy one of the coffee drying beds. This was a challenge. It took a few hours in the hot sun but, it was great to experience some real physical work and see the challenges these people have to work with to build structures. There is no concrete to cement the legs into the ground, minimal measuring equipment and wood that they have cut from trees in the hills.

Coffee Buying
It was a two kilometre walk to the next village. We convince the locals we are worthy to buy their coffee.  The first home was an experience. Dirt floors, minimal wooden furniture, pigs and chickens running through at will. One man wanted to know what we used the coffee for. “We grow many things on our properties - mangoes, coconuts etc and we sell them in the village nearby just like we sell the coffee.

But, noone ever comes from far away lands to talk to us about coconuts?

What makes coffee so special? Do you use it for medicine?”   

Selling the Coffee
The last step was to put the coffee onto the back of a donkey. What the donkey couldn’t carry, we had to put on our own backs and carry it, still in parchment, to the next village where it is sold.

I have competed numerous times in international barista competitions. The name Raul Rodas was one I knew. We shook hands and hugged at the WBC. Soren Stiller Markussen, Stefanos Domatiotas and Kyle Straw were all baristas who were favourites to make the top six in the WBC. Now, we were together on this farm. Just us, the farm and the farmers. Now when I refer to Soren,  Raul, Stafanos, Kyle, Haruna or Thomas, they are names of good friends. 

Now, all the baristas on the trip are working on a plan for us to buy the La Encanada coffee and represent Dinoicio’s coffee to our customers in different corners of the globe. Over the next four years we have committed to working with Dionicio and Fedmin and they have committed to working on improving the farm and the quality of the coffee for us. Some, and hopefully all of us, can make trips back to Finca La Encanada to see our friends and to learn of the improvements they are making to the farm and hopefully to the livelihood of the people. I will be going back at least once a year. It is a place that is very, very far away, but very close to my heart.