How a visit to Colombia Alta boosted our respect for coffee
We were still in the early rounds of coffee-tasting when a European in our group – so impressed by the wealth of information – interrupted the presentation. “I know so much about wine,” he confessed, “but I drink lots more coffee than wine, and I realize now that I don’t know much about coffee.”
Our group was inside the family home of Alejandro Bedoya, a third-generation coffee producer. At 32, he’s combining his college degree in business, his international certification in coffee-tasting, and his family’s love of art and ecology to develop a small “specialty” brand called Combia Mountain Coffee.
We’d driven about half an hour from Pereira into the steep, verdant mountains to reach the farmhouse. Bedoya greeted us warmly with stories of his grandparents who’d started the homestead. They had met and married elsewhere, but his grandma’s parents didn’t like granddad, so the newlyweds took off and settled in this highland, dubbed Combia Alta. “Our story,” says Bedoya, “is a love story.”
Business degree in hand, Bedoya seeks to honor his elders in a modern way. He’s created specialty coffees to match their personalities: Dali, gentle like his mom; and Delio, strong like his dad, for instance. Each blend comes in a box decorated with a print of a floral painting made by his sister.
We first sat in the living room, adorned with the same colorful floor tiles and dark wood furniture that the grandparents installed. From the kitchen came the smell of wood burning in the stove.
Bedoya started us off with a cup of chaqueta, a typical morning coffee that acts as a “jacket” to warm you in the crisp air before farming. It’s a drip brew, made with medium-roast beans and sweetened with panela, an unrefined sugarcane juice.
Daniel Henao, a manager in the area’s Coffee Cluster that helps farmers and roasters, joined us and explained how Colombia is moving up the value chain. Instead of selling mainly green coffee beans abroad, more producers like Bedoya are roasting, blending, and developing their own brands, both for local sale and export. That helps them earn more per kilo – a needed boost now that climate change is reducing local production.
“Because we have so much rain, there’s less fruit,” says Henao, referring to the juicy, red cherries that hold the bean inside. “That’s a message to the world: We have to take care of our ecosystems.”
We then gathered in the dining room around a table full of glasses holding blends from Bedoya’s farm and others nearby. Bedoya shared the basics of the region’s coffee as we peppered him with questions.
Plant a seed and reap fruit some 24 months later. A bush can last 25 years, if well-tended. Harvesting is by hand, which Brazilians call “romantic.” (Brazil often uses machines.) Most coffee is arabica, which tastes lighter and more flowery than the robusta species. A blend is designated a “specialty” coffee after a panel of certified tasters rates it at least 80 of 100 points, says Bedoya.
Next, we slowly inhaled the fragrance off each glass of the dry ground coffee to “wake up” our noses, “because we’re inside our heads, in our every-day thoughts, disconnected from the present moment,” according to Bedoya. Then, we learned the anatomy of the fruit, from its outer skin, pulp, and hull to the silver skin protecting the seed or bean. Bedoya showed us seeds in varied forms. He told us he dries his beans in thin layers in the sun for 10 days to get the right humidity for optimal roasting. Too much moisture, the coffee can spoil fast; too little, the taste fades. The fullest flavors come from medium roasts, he says.
Bedoya then added boiling water to the glasses, and we inhaled the aroma or bloom, head down, nose to each cup. The scent differed, now wet. No one shared their opinion so as not to influence the rest.
Finally, we tasted the liquid in each glass off small spoons, sucking it in swiftly “to feel a splash in the back of the mouth and particles up toward the nose,” as Bedoya said. We washed off the spoon after each slurp. Then, we repeated the cycle after the coffees cooled a bit to check if the taste was consistent. We found the coffees diverse, some with more hints of berries, others more florals or chocolate. Bedoya linked the variety to soil, altitude, micro-climate, drying, roasting, blending, and more. Most of us chose the same blend as our favorite, but there was no judgment. “The best coffee is the one you like,” said Henao open-heartedly.
After homemade pumpkin cake, we headed out, up a windy, dirt road to touch the coffee bushes and munch on their fruit. We walked by orange and banana trees, hibiscus bushes, and other tropical plants amid sounds of birds and vistas of valleys, quite relaxed. Bedoya’s grandparents surely would be proud. I’m grateful for his love of family and pursuit of excellence, with a deeper respect for coffee.
Colombia’s coffee-growing region is developing a “Ruta de Café” featuring small farms that offer tours, tastings, and, in some cases, overnight stays, even with cottages. Pereira recently launched a “Passport” that highlights farms and other coffee stops, with details on Instagram at @pasaportedelcafe.
