Life after Annandale High: In Search of Juan Valdez

Growing up in the US in the 1960s, I have a distinct memory of Juan Valdez, the ruggedly handsome Colombian coffee grower who rode across our television screen on horseback, inspecting his coffee plantation and extolling the qualities of Colombian coffee. Of course, Juan Valdez was an entirely fictional character, created in 1959 by a New York City ad agency working for the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation to promote their product. The name Juan was chosen because it’s the most popular boys’ name in South America and the last name Valdez was chosen because English speakers had no trouble pronouncing it.

I may have mentioned that I stopped into a Juan Valdez coffee shop on my first full day in Bogota. These shops exist throughout the country. The coffee was okay but nothing exceptional. Somehow, I always expected that I’d be drinking some of the world’s best coffee during my time in Colombia. You can imagine how disappointed I was to discover that the country exports nearly all of its best coffee, leaving the less desirable stuff for domestic consumption. No wonder Colombians drink more tea than coffee!

Coffee originated centuries ago in Ethiopia, but it is the crop most closely associated with Colombia. Today, it is produced throughout the country. Perhaps the best known coffee-growing region, called the Coffee Triangle, is located in the Andes, west of Bogota and south of Medellin. In fact, UNESCO has designated the Coffee Triangle as a World Heritage Cultural Area.

To reach it, we took a short flight on a prop jet from Medellin to Pereira, one of the main cities in the region. Even from window of the plane, I was struck by the intense greens of the undulating countryside.

On the drive south from the airport to the rural area where we’d be staying, we noticed forests of bamboo and fields of bananas and plantains. Alejo noted that tomatoes, avocadoes, and pineapple are other important crops grown in the region’s fertile soil.

About that bamboo, which we were surprised to see – it’s not the same bamboo that grows in Asia. This bamboo is native to South America and it’s the primary building material in this part of Colombia. Since bamboo is not a long-lasting material, structures built by the indigenous people who lived in this area (there were hundreds of different tribes) before the arrival of the Spanish have not survived. We do know something about their lifestyle, however. They grew corn, hunted the abundant game, and gathered the plentiful wild fruits and vegetables. They also excelled as goldsmiths.

The Spanish arrived in the area in the early 1500s and forced the indigenous people to pan gold from the rivers. But the amount of the precious metal produced didn’t satisfy the greedy Spaniards so before long, they moved on to the area inhabited by the Muisca tribe and established the city of Bogota, leaving behind no permanent settlement in the coffee region.

Our accommodations at the Hotel Bosques del Saman were spacious and delightfully rustic. My suite of rooms, consisting of two bedrooms, a tiny bathroom, and a separate hammock room with refrigerator, could have accommodated a family of four.

The hotel was actually was a finca, i.e. small farm, located near the town in Alcala. Walking around the property, we noticed a zip line, a couple of cows, a playground, a pool, and some strange trees called fish tail palms.

At an elevation of 4500-5000 feet, the Coffee Triangle experiences comfortable temperatures and humidity throughout the year. Once the sun went down, it was delightfully cool, and stars were flung across the dark sky. We enjoyed a simple dinner at the hotel (white fish with passion fruit sauce) and then a quiet night to rest up for the next day’s exploration of coffee country.

At dawn, it was quiet, save for the chirping of the birds, the crowing of the roosters, and the braying of a lonely burro. I opened the shutters at 6:30 am and took a deep breath of the fresh air. The sun was coming up, and the temperature was starting to rise. Alejo advised us to dress in layers, as it would reach the 70s by midday.

Most likely, coffee first came to Colombia in the mid-1700s, possibly brought by Jesuit priests from Spain. Commercial coffee cultivation, for export, began around 1830. In terms of latitude, geography, and climate, Colombia is similar to Ethiopia. Both are located in the “coffee belt” between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. Today, Colombia is the world’s third largest producer of coffee, after Brazil and Vietnam. As I previously mentioned, Colombia exports its best coffee. The United States is the number one importer of Colombian coffee, followed by Germany and Japan.

You’ve probably heard of Arabica coffee and possibly Robusta coffee as well. These are different types of coffee plants. Only Arabica beans are grown in Colombia. Arabica, which cannot tolerate extreme heat, is grown at elevations of 3000 to 7000 feet. The heartier Robusta coffee is more heat resistant and can be grown at elevations of 1000 to 4000 feet. There are definite differences in quality between the two types.

Alejo described the hierarchy of coffee quality as a triangle. At the base is Robusta, which is rather bland. Next up is “natural” Arabica, produced from beans that are dried with the skins on. Somewhat higher in quality is “washed” Arabica, produced from beans that are peeled, then washed and dried. At the top of the triangle you find specialty coffees. These are the very best quality and include varieties such as Kona (from Hawaii), Blue Mountain (from Jamaica), and civet (which I tried in Vietnam).

According to Alejo, the most expensive coffee in the world is Black Ivory, which comes from Thailand. If you’re interested in trying it, you should know that the coffee beans are eaten by elephants and are then retrieved from their poop. I just checked on Amazon and it sells for about $45-$100 per ounce. That would make about 3 cups of coffee.

At the present time, about 550,000 Colombian families have coffee farms. The overwhelming majority (80-85%) of these farmers have small plantations, called fincas, of 1-20 acres. About 10-15% of Colombian coffee farmers have medium size plantations of 20-100 acres, also called fincas. Only 5% of Colombian coffee growers have plantations of more than 100 acres. Farms of this size are called haciendas.

After the coffee is picked, most farmers sell their coffee beans at coops run by the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation in the small towns. In other words, they are not involved in the roasting process.

Our first morning in the Coffee Triangle, we set out in our bus right after breakfast, heading south for a full day of exploration. When we reached the town of Montenegro, we divided up into groups of four and climbed into the open backs of Willy’s jeeps.

These unlikely vehicles are an important part of Colombian coffee culture. After World War 2, many were shipped to Colombia for military purposes where they quickly replaced mules on the rugged mountain roads in the coffee region. Today they are the main provider of public transport throughout the Coffee Triangle.

Our bumpy 20-minute ride brought us the Buenos Aires coffee farm owned and operated by a friendly local couple, Jesus and Angela. We stopped to talk to a few of the workers who were out in the field along with Jesus.

Humberto, one of the workers on the coffee finca

Much of the work on coffee farms is done by seasonal migrant laborers who are paid according to how much they pick. There are two harvests a year, one in April/May and another in November/December. During picking season, the work day lasts from 6am to 5pm. It’s hard physical labor for relatively low pay (about $35-40 a day on average) and Jesus told us that it’s difficult nowadays to find young people willing to do the work.

We continued on to the house where we met Angela and sipped some of the coffee produced on the farm. Now this was the kind of coffee I had been hoping for!

Jesus and Angela are a rarity among Colombian coffee farmers – they roast their own coffee beans and operate a café in the town of Salento. Jesus spoke passionately about his commitment to producing coffee of the highest quality. The finca had been started by his grandfather. Although Jesus worked for many years as a lawyer, he never gave up his dream of running the farm.

Jesus, of Jesus Martin Coffee

Out among the coffee plants, Jesus showed us how coffee is a fruit like a cherry with skin, sweet flesh, a thin layer of parchment, and then a seed inside. A display of coffee at various stages in its development added to our understanding. The seedlings will not produce coffee until 2 ½ to 3 years after they’re planted.

In order to obtain the highest quality coffee, Jesus uses no chemical fertilizers. He had to train his workers to take the time to sort through and pick only those beans that are totally ripe and red. At most other plantations, all the beans are picked at the same time, regardless of their state of ripeness.

We saw small white flowers on some of the plants. After the flowers fall off, the beans should be ready to harvest in about 9 months.

After the beans are picked, the workers bring their bags back from the fields and do another round of sorting. They are squirted with water and any beans that float are rejected, as they’re not dense enough and will be second quality.

A third sort is visual. Workers check for the perfect color, rejecting any that fall short of their high standards.

Once these sorts have been completed, it’s time to decide which process to use: natural or washed. For washed beans, a machine removes the skin and washes and dries the coffee fruit. For the natural process, the coffee skin is left on and the fruit is put into plastic containers to ferment without oxygen for about 1000 hours.

Drying is the next step. Rather than using an oven, Jesus dries all of his coffee using only the sun, a time-consuming method which he learned in Africa. It was toasty hot in the drying room, which resembled a greenhouse. More sorting was done as the coffee beans dried. We watched Jesus and one of the workers pluck out any less than perfect fruit.

We were more than ready for lunch at this point, especially since we’d be smelling mouthwatering aromas wafting from the kitchen. Angela served us sancocho, a traditional dish made throughout Colombia. Meat (chicken, beef, pork) or fish is cooked into a broth with corn, potatoes, and yuca. The meats, potatoes, plantains, yuca, rice, salad, avocado, and arepas are served on the side along with a sauce made of tomatoes and onions. Diners can garnish the broth with cilantro and lime to taste.