BeanScene Magazine

Day 1
The sun was far way from rising, as we stumbled onto busses and taxis to make our way to the Puente Aéreo-Avianca, Bogota’s domestic airport. Rubbing sleep from our eyes, the early morning wake-up call didn’t keep us from making friendly introductions as we were herded into the tiny planes that would take us to Eje Cafetero, the coffee axis.

From every corner of the world – Israel to Iceland, Croatia to Canada, Puerto Rico to Poland – we made acquaintance with the people who over the next two days would share the experience of visiting the source of an industry that united us all.

For the first time in the World Barista Championship’s history, the competition was taking place in a coffee producing country: Colombia. As such Café de Colombia, who were hosting the event, had taken the initiative to sponsor a trip to the country’s coffee producing regions. A non-profit organisation, Café de Colombia represents over 553,000 of the nation’s coffee growers. It seemed an appropriate step, then, that in welcoming baristas from around the world that they would bring us to the heart of their activity – introducing us to the farmers and support workers who represent perhaps one of the world’s most highly advanced and organised coffee growing organisations.

With over 130 baristas, coaches, roasters, friends, and the occasional journalist, from over 50 countries on board, we flew over the Andes Mountains that divides the country into three cordilleras, or ranges, over the eastern cordillera to start our trip in Pereira. We continued our introductions over the short plane ride and transfer onto busses, which took us through a spectacular landscape of rural villages, terraced fields and winding hillsides.

As we admired the countryside, after around 45 minutes got our first glimpse of coffee plants outside the window. Although nearly everyone on the trip had been involved with coffee for much of their working lives, for many this was the first time they would ever seen a coffee plant.

Palmar Hlodversson was one such barista. The former Iceland barista champion was accompanying current Iceland champion Tumi Ferrer to the championship, and with a career dedicated to coffee, he couldn’t contain his excitement about finally seeing the plant. “This is every enthusiastic barista’s dream,” he chimes. “We’ve both been to WBC, and while it’s one thing to go deep into coffee, we work with the end of the chain, the part that deals with the chemistry and the brew. This was an angle we’ve never had a chance to know about.”

The fields of coffee trees flying past our window soon opened up to an impressively modern facility, which seemed strangely placed in the hillsides of rural Colombia. As it turns out, it couldn’t have been more appropriately placed, as we were arriving at the Cenicafé research centre. Founded in 1938 by the coffee growers of the region Chinchina, Caldas, the centre runs a series of research programs to improve the country’s coffee production. From designing strains of coffee plants resistant to rust to working on carbon neutrality, the modern facilities house the ambitious activities the association undergoes to improve the famers’ livelihoods.

We learn that Cenicafé employs 150 people, of which 45 hold a post-graduate degree. The centre regularly hosts international students, as one of the leading coffee research centres in the world.
In the lab we learn that it takes around 15 years to produce a new coffee strain. As funguses and diseases are constantly evolving to adapt to new strains, we’re told it’s a never ending catch up game to ensure that a new strain is ready to go, once an established one can no longer fight off its natural enemies. Cenicafé hosts a healthy gene bank of coffee trees tracing the history of the varieties, while also playing around with some experiemental ones.

It’s here that we also learn about the association’s Extension Service. While it’s one thing to have all this great research on hand, it’s another task altogether to get the fruit of this research out to the farmers. The association employs thousands of technicians and agronomists who transfer the technical knowledge and research gained at Cenicafé to the growers.

In our introductions to the Extension Service, we’re brought into a lecture room and promised the “only powerpoint presentation of the day”. Eager to get back to the plants, the presentation doesn’t seem overly appealing, but as the screen jumps from bullet points to an areal shot of sloping farms and we’re handed 3D glasses, our interest naturally peaks. We were looking at SICA, an information system that tracks the location and alphanumeric information on coffee growers, and georeferences their farms and coffee lots. This includes the 3D satellite images that we’re seeing. In addition to providing a great visual show as the operator can virtually fly over the fields, the system allows the extension workers to explore a farmer’s property from a bird’s eye view to see how they can best make use of their land.   

Moving on from this scientific interaction at Cenicafé, our next stop was the Manizales Coop purchase point to witness where the financial transactions take place. With 511 purchase points throughout the country, run via the 36 co-ops, this is where the farmers’ labour pays off. The coop’s operator, Miguel Fernando Rodrigues, explains that when farmers come to town, they become a price taker, in that they need to take whatever price they can get for their beans. With the association’s purchase points in place, they help establish a floor price in that other buyers have to be competitive with the purchase point and offer a better price. This helps ensure farmers get a fair price for their efforts.

After such an educative day, the evening was dedicated to fun and entertainment with a trip to the Colombian Coffee Park. That’s right: it’s a coffee-themed coffee park, the only one in the world, located in Montenegro, Quindio. From coffee rides to a coffee museum, the museum is a coffee lover’s mecca. While the groups had been divided during the day, we regrouped that evening for an exclusive show of the coffee dance. As the story goes, the coffee dance was traditionally performed by the villagers in celebration of the cultivating season. Today, the Coffee Park’s interpretation was a spectacular performance of acrobatics, colourful costumes and enthusiastic dancers – with performers swinging across the ceiling and throwing each other around, all in synch to fantastic traditional and contemporary music.

Day 2
The next morning was a highlight I think for many people on the trip, as we were finally visiting a coffee farm. The trip there was interesting, to say the least. As our bus pulled up to a line-up of open-top jeeps, three people took a comfortable seat until we were told that we had to fit no less than eight people per jeep. Crowded standing up in the back, we tried our best to find something to hold onto – mostly each other – as we drove through the hilly countryside in Buenavista to the Finca Tesalia farm. The lot we visited was around 18 months old, and we could start seeing cherries forming. The Extension Service worker who welcomed us explains that they need to renovate around 20 per cent of the farm every year to ensure they don’t loose production.

The farm owners Leureund Arizu and Rosa Ines Quitian tell us about their lives on the farm, noting the problems they’ve been having as a result in recent climate change.
“Previously, it was easier to made a living, now it’s harder,” says Rosa through a translator. “We’re seeing more rain when it’s wet, and it’s a lot drier during the dry season. You can see from my simple house, that while I make a decent living, I’m certainly not rich.”

Rosa’s 4 hectare farm is typical of a Colombian coffee grower belonging to the Federation. Her and her husband work on the farm from 6am to 5 pm five days a week, and during harvesting season they hire a few workers to held them out. For each half a hectare, they’ll get around 800 kilograms of beans, and might get paid around $2 per pound. “It’s enough to cover our expenses, and we can invited people around and visit our friends,” she says.

From Rosa’s farm, we piled back onto the Jeeps and our next stop was to a farm that was anything but typical. Just a short ride away from Rosa’s place, we arrived at Café San Alberto, situated on the San Alberto Estate. Looking over a breath-taking view of the plantation, we sampled their Quintuple Selection prepared in a French press. An impressive cup that had the best baristas in the world swooning, owner Jan Palbo Villotu explains the selection process, where the beans undergo a five-stage hand selection process.

If the coffee wasn’t impressive enough, the café’s site is one worth the trip to Colombia alone. Designed to replicate the experience of a winery, the modern café sits on the hillside overlooking the fields, allowing us to look at the very plants we are tasting. It was difficult to tear us away from this fantastic location, but our guide lured us away with promises of further coffee education at the El Agrado experimental coffee farm. The visit was an appropriate wrap up of the entire coffee process, as we were able to witness every stage from planting, de-pulping, fermentation, washing and drying, all the way to roasting and cupping. Although the majority of baristas were familiar with the process in theory, for most this was a first opportunity to see it in practice.  “It was really nice to see everything, how the seeds are growing and how they are working with the coffee – it’s awesome, says Petra Vesela, who was accompanying Czech Republic Barista Champion Zdenek Smrck.

While the station was set-up for us for the day, often farmers are invited to the farm to cup their coffee, and learn about the production process to help them improve the quality of their coffee, and therefor their returns.

As the trip came to an end, what was evident throughout were the lengths the Federation had gone through to welcome the baristas and teach them about the growing process. With the championship taking place for the first time in history, the trip helped further cement the link in the process in bringing together coffee producing and consuming nations. As the Cenicafé Director Fernando Gast had told us upon our arrival: “You are very important for us. You are part of the final chain that few coffee growers can reach.”