Gold Standard Origin Diaries: Tolima, Colombia - Guava Banana
It’s early morning in Bogota, the skies are grey and the sidewalks are scattered with puddles. It is the rainy season in Colombia, and because the capital of Bogota sits at an elevation of 8,675 feet, it is a lot chillier than one would expect from a country that is crossed by the equator. Although the elevation isn’t quite as high as back home in Colorado, it’s still up there, making me grateful for the puffy jacket I brought from Colorado.
I wait on the sidewalk outside of the hotel ready to meet the “Bogota Boys,” as we have lovingly nicknamed the brothers behind el Vergel Estates. Shady and Elias are producing incredible coffee in the Colombian province of Tolima at their family farm, and after tasting the coffee they’ve been sending us in Colorado for months, I was eager to see their operation for myself.
I don’t have cell service, but I am hoping they’ll be able to find me easily, as I am very clearly a female gringo with an American backpack strapped to my back, and fair skin that is indicative of living in a place where it’s winter eight months out of the year. Quite the opposite of this tropical country, which apparently gets a lot warmer the further you travel outside of the elevated capital and into the lowlands. When Shady and Elias spot me in front of the hotel doors and pick me up, traveling outside of the capital is exactly what we do, and so begins the five-hour journey to the family farm in Tolima, Colombia.
Meeting Shady and Elias is a perfect example of the reason I wanted to get involved in the coffee industry in the first place--as a way to connect with the world through coffee. Being able to put a face to a name, and a voice to a Whatsapp message, and see the brothers behind the incredible coffee we have been enjoying for months, really brings things full circle when it comes to appreciating the coffee journey from farm to cup. The drive is long so I have plenty of time to ask them all of my Colombian coffee-growing questions and they have time to tell me all about it. In between questions I enjoy the views from the window. Just as I was surprised at how chilly Bogota was, I am equally taken aback by the diversity of the country I see within the five hour drive to the farm.
Getting out of the capital is a mini road trip in and of itself. The city is expansive and the traffic as thick as sludge. Trucks, cars, busses, and motorcycles intermingle and spread across the four lane interstate running from east to west. Running parallel to the interstate is a bike path that follows us the whole way, filled with both cyclists and pedestrians. The traffic begins to spread thinner as we reach the edge of the city.
We climb down and out of the city and then high over the mountain pass. Along the route, we travel over the Cordillera de Los Andes, which is a mountain range whose spine runs all the way from Argentina to Colombia, and see the tall Colombian pine trees reaching for the sun that begins to peek out as we get further and further from the tall buildings and city sidewalks. The road dips deep down towards sea level and climbs back up into the clouds, back down again, and back up until we reach Tolima. The warm, humid air flows through the truck, the smell of forever-fresh rain, the wet farmland sweeping across the landscape where coffee not only grows, but thrives.
Heading from Bogota to the Colombian coffee growing region of Tolima requires a trek through twisty turny one-lane highways riding in the company of big diesel trucks. We are in front of and behind the slow moving trucks carrying goods to and from the city to the ports on either coast, helping to keep the Colombian economy moving and the global economy spinning.
What are these trucks carrying? A good guess might actually be the very thing we are traveling to Tolima in search of--coffee. Colombia may be the third-largest producer of coffee behind Brazil and Vietnam, but they are perhaps the best, because they produce a majority of Arabica beans in comparison with the first two top-producing countries that focus on Robusta, Arabica’s more caffeinated albeit less tasty coffee cousin. Colombia exports a total of 14.1 million 70kg bags of coffee every year. The odds are good that these trucks are part of what makes that huge number of coffee exports possible.
Two of the many Colombian coffee producers are the Bogota Boys. Their family farm, El Vergel Estates, has a long-standing history in the region. What makes their coffee so good? They say it’s because of the shade their coffee plants receive, the high altitude, cool temps, and that they give their trees lots of space in the fields. The harvest occurs twice a year, once during April and May and again in the fall during September, October, and November. And the harvest depends on the weather rather than the variety, so even though there are several varieties growing on the farm, they will all follow the weather, the changing temperatures, and the sun before turning their cherries deep red and ready for picking. Elias and Shady grow a variety of coffees including cattura, geisha, pacamara, java, and red borbon. They are all fantastic specialty coffees and represent what Colombia is known for: high quality, specialty coffee with vibrant flavors that produce a clean cup. One of these coffees piques our head roaster’s interest in particular, the guava banana.
The guava banana is a cattura variety grown at 1,350 meters with tasting notes of sweet guava jams, red fruits, and red apple. It is a natural process coffee with a two-step fermentation process. The first is an aerobic fermentation in wide but short tanks to expose as much of the cherry as possible for an initial oxidation of the fruit that contains the bean inside for around 14 hours to accelerate the fermentation (due to higher temperatures). Afterwards, these cherries are introduced to El Vergel Estates’ special steel tanks for another 48-52 hours of anaerobic submerged fermentation to chill the cherries after the previous fermentation, striving for a slower process of fermentation and aiming to develop more light and soft notes of the profile. After the fermentation is finished, the coffee is taken to raised beds and silos for intermittent drying of 12 to 15 days, and finished with a stabilization process in grain pro bags for one and a half months in the humidity-controlled vault at El Vergel Estates.
My first day is spent wandering the farm, walking through the rows of coffee trees, trying not to slip in the mud as we climb up and down the hillside. I learn the difference between a perfectly ripened cherry ready to pick from the tree, and ones that need more time to develop into that deep, rich red. These coffees are all handpicked to ensure they are only chosen at peak ripeness and it is this attention to detail that shines through in your cup. Wandering the farm I eat countless crisp cherries, being careful not to bite down on the hard green coffee bean inside, and spitting it out instead.
The day ends with a meal around the table with the El Vergel Estates team, enjoying fish and plantains, as the bright orange Colombian sun squeezes all of its brightness out at the last minute before dipping below the horizon and giving way to other colors lighting the sky before turning to black. The sound of crickets chirping and birds whizzing past contribute to the orchestra that is Colombian Coffee Country. The coffee farm becomes a perfect Colombian silhouette.
We follow dinner with one final cup of coffee together, as the rain starts to fall and lightning shoots up into the sky.
