Journey to Colombia: Experiencing Huila
As I write, the last taste of chocolate with panela (unrefined cane sugar) fades from my tongue. I seize a rare moment to myself in this magical series of moments. I’m in Huila, Colombia, and I can now verify: they didn’t exaggerate when they said Colombia was God’s gift to the world.
It’s not just the thrusting, mist-covered hills or the stunning forest and flower variety, or even the beautiful people with faces open to friend and stranger alike. It’s not the coffee, the cacao, the mangos, the panela. It’s not the details of mythology creeping into architecture and decorations, or the classical guitar hanging against a whitewashed wall next to hand-braided straw sombreros. It’s so much more.
At Crema.co, we believe in the beautiful connections between coffee producers, professionals, and consumers.
This week I am privileged to see those connections at work as I travel with the Cafe Imports Barista Origin Tour to Huila, Colombia. Traveling with these renowned coffee figures — Sasa Sestic, the current World Barista Champion, Lem Butler, who has won the most barista competitions in US history, among others— and now a solid eight+ years into my own career in coffee, I am gripped again and again with the importance of seeing where our coffee comes from.
Earth, Plants, Hands
Our coffee comes from the rich red earth, from the steep slopes and from the low-hanging clouds.
Our coffee especially comes from the gnarled hands of the trabajeros who pick it, clinging to steep slopes like mountaineers, from the surly or smiling faces of people who have grown up in the shade of caturra plants and played among the fermentation tanks as children.
Our coffee comes from the hands of dedicated roasters who pursue the ritual of flame and fragrance, and from baristas who wake in the dark to complete the circle by inviting you into this living, thrumming cycle of connection.
Arnulfo Leguizamo
Have you seen Paradise Roaster’s Colombia Primavera coffee on Crema.co? (Beta invite required.) Well, I met Arnulfo, the owner of Finca Primavera, yesterday.
I rode horseback — uncomfortably at first, and then filled with exhilaration — up the winding roads to his farm. I climbed the impossibly steep hill to see all of creation at my feet and breathe the clean air. And I drank coffee and ate an apple with the rest of my group, all of us stilled with the beauty of these connections humming between us.
Arnulfo — who has become the face of Colombia Huila — patiently took photos with each of us, and walked us through the processing equipment on his farm.
A batch of coffee was resting in the fermentation tank, and its sweet, acetic stench struck us in the face. We compared muck boots with the workers, sighed with appreciation, and rode away with a clatter of horseshoes as the dusk fell. The afternoon will remain one of the most visceral and precious memories in my life.
And this is also coffee. Curiosity melding with experience, old and new, American and Australian and Italian and Colombian in a mélange of languages where everything is said, and nothing.
Originally published on October 13, 2015.
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