Caravela Coffee

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting “Cerro Azul”, the farm where our exclusive Colombian Geisha is grown, and it’s sister farm “La Esperanza”, both located in the municipality of Trujillo, Valle del Cauca, in the Western Cordillera of Colombia’s Andean mountain range.  I toured the farms with Miguel Jimenez, the General Manager of Cafe Granja La Esperanza.

 
Cerro Azul
 
Trujillo is about 2 hours north of Cali by car, travelling along side the Cauca river.  What begins as a normal Colombian highway with all its normal conditions turns into a pristine, newly laid asphalt leading towards the town of Rio Frio.  15 minutes further lies Trujillo, a nice, small town nestled in a small valley, with a large central park and a number of Art Deco style buildings.
 
We met Miguel in the central park and followed him up a side road through pine trees and coffee estates until we reached the gates of the “La Esperanza” farm.  Once we reached the farmhouse and had a chance to turn around, the central park of Trujillo with its church steeple, the foothills of the Western Cordillera and the Valle del Cauca in the distance made a stunning, yet peaceful landscape.

 
View of the town of Trujillo from “La Esperanza”
 
Both farms, “La Esperanza” and “Cerro Azul” are owned by Rigoberto and Luis Eduardo Herrera, two brothers who come from a traditional coffee family.  Their grandfather owned a very large Hacienda in the region of Trujillo that was slowly sold off over decades.  The Herreras left Colombia in the 1970’s to study engineering abroad but returned in 1998 with the dream of reconstructing their grandfather’s Hacienda and getting back into coffee farming.
 
They first bought “La Esperanza”, which is located very close where their grandfather’s original farm was located and now serves as their base in the region.  This farm is 100% organic, with trees of Colombia, Castillo and Caturra, plus 14,000 trees of Organic Geisha which are not yet in production. They later bought 4 other farms in Trujillo and Caicedonia (Northeast of Trujillo), and in 2005 leased a coffee farm in Boquete, Panama.  In total they now have 6 farms (5 in Colombia, 1 in Panama) and a total of 213 hectares planted with coffee.

 
Organic Geisha Plantings
 
They have decided to focus exclusively on specialty coffee, with the majority of their production at the moment being organically grown and certified.  Additional to their organic coffee, they are experimenting with many different varieties which they have planted on different parcels and fincas including: Geisha, Organic Geisha, Moka, Bourbon (Red, Yellow and Tekizik), Laurina, Pacamara, San Bernardo and Pache, in addition to the Organic Caturra which makes up the majority of Finca La Esperanza.  They are expecting to have first lots of their different varietals in the 2nd semester harvest of this year.
 
Miguel Jimenez is the General Manager of all the farms, including the one in Panama.  Originally from Bogota, his office is based in Cali and he travels everyday of the week to visit the different fincas.  Once every 45 days he goes to Panama.  Miguel spent 9 years with Cundicafe, one of the FNC-backed cooperatives, working as an agronomist in the department of Cundinamarca.  After that he spent several years managing a large organic coffee farm in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, near the Caribbean coast.  “It was magical” was how he described his time at that farm.  On one side is the snow-capped peak and on the other is the beaches of the Caribbean sea… this is the Colombia Garcia-Marquez writes about.

Miguel Jimenez

After his time in the Sierra Nevada, Miguel moved to “La Rochela”, another large farm only a few km down from “La Esperanza” and that used to be organic certified.  In 2006 Miguel moved to Cafe Granja La Esperanza and has been the man behind the strategy of the company ever since.  To say he is qualified is an understatement as he has spent his career on the leading edge of coffee in Colombia.  Miguel himself has a farm in Cundinamarca on which he grows Moka entirely for export to Asia.  Virmax first met Miguel in 2002 when he was at “La Rochela”, exporting that coffee to the US from 2003 to 2005.
 
The farm in Panama is called “La Carleida” and is situated next door to the famous Esmeralda farm owned by the Peterson family.  The success of the Geisha varietal encouraged Miguel and the Herrera brothers to try planting this variety in their native Colombia. Their idea was to build on the experience gathered by them in Panama and maximize it with what Colombia’s unique terroir could bring to the Geisha varietal.  To this end they decided to look for a farm close enough to “La Esperanza” and with the ideal Geisha growing conditions in terms of altitude, night time temperature, soil composition, access to light, situation to maritime winds, etc.  Luckily they found the right place just minutes away from their “La Esperanza” farm.

Miguel Jimenez, Cerro Azul from Caravela Coffee on Vimeo.

Click link above or see earlier video post.

Video - (In Spanish) Miguel Jimenez explaining how the farm was started.  Warning, video taken while traveling from La Esperanza to Cerro Azul in a Willy’s, not good for those with motion sickness.
 

The “Cerro Azul” farm was purchased in December 2006 and encompasses an area of 20 hectares between 1,700 m.a.s.l. and 1,950 m.a.s.l.  At that time it was a working coffee farm planted with Caturra trees.  In September 2007 they planted 35,000 Geisha plants using all of the knowledge that they acquired at “La Carleida” in Panama.  Where did they get 35,000 Geisha plants in Colombia??  Good question: they brought the seeds from Panama themselves, from their own plants.  So when they do a side-by-side cupping with their Panamanian and Colombian Geishas, they are cupping cousins.
 
Unlike most large Colombian farms, which focus exclusively on volume, “Cerro Azul” is managed very profesionally: each lot of Geisha is meticulously cared after.  From the distance at which the trees are planted to the custom levels of fertilizer that is applied to each plant.  “Cerro Azul” pays their pickers by the day, not by the sack or by weight like is customary in most Colombian farms.  This gives them the incentive to take their time and pick only the ripest cherries.  Overripe cherries or defects are picked and kept separate to avoid contamination or give fuel to the Broca.  The farm managers take the time to train each individual picker, explaining the reasons why it is so important to pick only the ripe cherries, making sure that each picker is part of the team. The average picker at “Cerro Azul” picks an average of 25 kg of cherry per day (which is equivalent to only 5 kg of dry parchment). That means that to produce one 70-kg bag of green coffee you need to add up the harvest of 20 pickers. This is expensive, but it is the only way to guarantee quality.

Only Ripes from Caravela Coffee on Vimeo.

Click link above or see earlier video post.

Video - Alejandro’s favorite picker, doing his thing, picking only the ripest cherries.
 

Despite being towards the end of the harvest, these Geisha trees were flush with ripe cherries to pick.  One of products of having multiple harvests in a year is that coffee trees in Colombia have all stages of coffee cherry production on one branch.  From buds, to flowers, green cherries to ripe, this beautiful occurrence makes picking only ripes difficult and time consuming.

Once cherries are picked, they are taken to the central processing facility located at “La Esperanza”.  Each Geisha lot is marked and cataloged separately.  It is depulped, washed and fermented separately.  It goes through a solar patio pre-drying for up to three days, then it is fully dried in a micro-silo that is only used for Geisha.  
 
When fully sun dried, Miguel says that the “Cerro Azul” has a refreshing mint note that only the best Colombians exhibit.  However, at this point they are not fully sun drying the Geisha Cerro Azul as the weather during the harvest was very humid and Geisha beans, because of their lower density, absorb moisture very easily.  However, they are experimenting with different solar driers so that in the future they can produce a fully sun-dried Geisha.  I personally would love to try the fully sun dried Geisha because the mint note could be very, very interesting and help identify Colombian Geisha as distinct and unique.

 
Parchment stored in GrainPro liners.

Once dry, the Geisha parchment is stored in 40 kg jute bags with GrainPro liners inside.  Each of those bags is cupped by their cupper and also by Virmax to ensure optimal quality.  The coffee is then rested for a minimum of 30 days until it is taken to La Primavera, Virmax’s dry mill, where each individual lot is milled and immediately packed in nitrogen-flushed, vacuum sealed Perdura ® boxes.  All of this attention manifests itself in the delicate characteristics of Geisha Cerro Azul.

Beautiful flowers of the Geisha variety in Colombia. 

The harvest that is ending is the first one of Geisha Cerro Azul.  The Organic Geisha is currently experiencing its first flowering and should be ready for the first cupping towards the end of the year.  The flowering of all crops looked really good.  The weather in the north of the Valle del Cauca has been nice and dry for the past few weeks, so we are hopeful that the fall harvest will be bountiful.  It looks promising.  

We’ve got access to a limited supply of Geisha Cerro Azul.  If you are interested, please contact me. Photos of the farm can be seen in Caravela’s flickr account (www.flickr.com/photos/caravelacoffee).