Colombian Adventure List

This year has been incredible so far. It feels like my coffee journey is either complete or it’s starting again with a bang. I’ve been to origin, we’ve bought our own badass coffee roasters, and we’ve released about a million incredible coffees to celebrate.

This is about to be a really longwinded way of me saying this:

• I’ve been to Colombia

• It’s an incredible country

• We have the most amazing list of Colombian coffees

• Buy Our Colombian coffees here

 

Alright! If you’re in it to win it, then let’s bloody go!

 

Before Colombia

Life was and is pretty decent for me and the Cuppers. We’re all in somewhat gainful employment, and on the good days we’re doing what we love. We live in England, which for all its shit, is a pretty lucky position to be in.

Me and my partner Jess moved out of Sheffield to the Peak District, and that made me really happy I think, but I was drinking quite a lot last summer so maybe it didn’t make me as happy as I thought it did. Anyway, it didn’t make Jess so happy that she wanted to settle down, have children and accept that the adventure stage of her young adulthood was over. What we needed was a tropical adventure, but the idea of having to pay for it was properly stressing me out… until, lightbulb moment, get Cuppers to buy me a ticket to origin!

All I had to do was convince the boys that the company needed me to go somewhere really cool that I would most likely really enjoy. I can’t remember exactly how the meeting went, so I’ll embellish a little for the reader’s enjoyment.

It was a cold, miserable morning in north Sheffield. The kind of grey day when the sun barely makes it over the incinerator chimney that landmarks our home. The creak and groan of our shutter door as the motor forced it into its rolled housing seemed to directly mirror my experience of rolling out of bed but an hour before. You know you’re properly self-absorbed when inanimate objects empathise with you. Get it together man, you’re on a mission! A flat white was needed, if not fancied.

Caffeine ingested, I sat at our Ikea table cradling a space heater between my legs. Warm thighs give me power for what’s to come!

Harley walked in, on time, with a face on. Standard. I don’t know why, but the first look he shoots me every morning is always daggers. He brews a filter and starts muttering to himself about race cars or something. Then Thomas steps in, late as usual, his beady eyes trained on me knowingly—nothing gets past Thomas. “Why are we here?” snarled Harley with indifference. “Because Jasper has something he wants from us, probably money again,” chirped Thomas with a hint of sarcasm. “Sit down lads,” I said, shrugging off both their attempts to derail my confidence. “I’ve had a fantastic idea, and you’re both going to love it.”

They didn’t love it. I told them that if I went to Colombia I’d come back a new man—professional and focused. They didn’t believe it. I told them I’d buy heaps of beautiful Colombian coffees, and noticed Harley’s furrowed brow begin to loosen. I had him and I knew it. I was playing him like only I know how (and maybe Gemma, and definitely the dogs actually).

Then there was Thomas, Mr Sensible Financial Decisions—just the kind of breezeblock wall you don’t want to hit from a weak and selfish position. He was resolute, spitting out, “You can’t use the credit card for a Colombian Christmas if the company isn’t in profit!” This was his undoing, the crack in his resolution had been targeted and was about to take a direct hit from little old Jasp. “But Thomas, you told me we made a tiny profit in the last quarter—are you telling me you got the books wrong again? Shall I contact the accountants for a redo?” As the beads of sweat began to appear on his brow, I delivered the final blow addressed to both my co-directors.

“Do you really want me to have to come and live with you guys? Does me suffering really do the company any good? How can I sell the coffee if I’m still not completely convinced it’s a fruit?” Boom, we were going to Colombia!

Everything else in the lead-up was easy. It’s amazing the shit you can put yourself through when you know there’s tropical sunshine ahead. I only have two regrets about the pre-Colombia period: not learning much Spanish, and putting our rental on Airbnb. Both of those things I’d suggest aren’t worth doing unless you want to take them seriously.

Watched Beetlejuice 2 on the plane, loved it.

 

The First Bit

Arriving at Bogotá we were pretty spaced out. It was around 11pm local time and we just wanted to get to our accommodation for a reset. I got some cash out from a machine and kind of made an effort not to get in the first guy’s taxi but ended up in it anyway. He kept talking to us in Spanish and we kept saying “si… si… no comprende”—this interaction was a sign of things to come. When we arrived at the hotel he asked for an amount, I didn’t have a clue what he was saying so just gave him a handful of Pesos. He tried to refuse it, so I gave him some more. When I insisted he did a little dance and got on his way… I’d given him about 50 quid for a 15-minute journey. Hope it made his Christmas. Jess made me feel very silly about it.

Bogotá was a cool place to wake up. We walked around Chapinero to find our feet. Neither of us having been to South America before, everything was exotic and interesting—especially the arepas! With what little change I had left from the cab ride I could afford more arepas than I could eat in a week—gorgeous little fried corn discs full of beef and egg, they are amazing. Jess enjoyed them enough, but wanted “proper breakfast”. We easily found somewhere serving flat whites and poached eggs. Like the arepa down my t-shirt, our delusions of being intrepid explorers crumbled away. Eggs were good, coffee was bad.

 

First Coffee “Experience”

Bogotá’s an interesting place, but it’s not why we were in Colombia, so we headed out to Choachí for some adventuring. Choachí is fantastic! We didn’t see a single other tourist while we were there, and despite not having a clue what anyone was saying, we found the people out there super welcoming. After a couple days’ chill we jumped on a bus to go see Latin America’s 6th tallest waterfall, La Chorrera.

Getting off the bus a bunch of guys approached us trying to get us to do something. Naturally assuming they were trying to sell us something, we said no thanks and set off walking in the vague direction of the waterfall. That was a mistake—they were offering us a lift. It was about a 2-hour trek in the blazing heat to get to the start of the waterfall hike. I was starting to get really pissed off with the situation I’d put us in.

At the base of the ascent, I was ready to turn around. Then I heard “Best coffee in Colombia” volley out from inside a tin-roofed shack. Wow. We were so taken aback to be addressed in English that I didn’t even think to question the claim. This was exactly what the doctor ordered. The guy who shouted was an interesting character—not the type of dude we expected to encounter in this rurality. He looked like a tanned Chad Muska (American skater known for wearing baggy hip hop clothing) with broken glasses and a layer of dust on his garms. “Hey, where you guys from?” followed the spurious initial claim. We told him, and chatted for a couple minutes—turns out he was from the city visiting his parents and helping with their business. Coffee credentials established, low expectational bar set, we were ready to try the “best coffee in Colombia”.

It was fucking incredible! A little plastic cup of filter with sugar and star anise in it. This was the first time I’d enjoyed coffee for the sake of coffee in many, many years. It made me think—what is the point of anything I do? When something can taste so good with just a tiny bit of adulteration, why bother seeking the finest? Maybe this was the best coffee in Colombia? It was certainly the best thing for me right in that moment. I think we spend too much time trying to objectively define quality. Perhaps we should adjust our lives, not our brew ratios? Nah, control the controllables innit.

 

Coffee Business Numero Uno

We headed back into Bogotá for a day with Caravela (one of our origin partners). We arrived fresh from the jungle and looking like absolute shit. So it was a bit awkward when the perfectly put-together Juan welcomed us into the pristine airconned offices. They had made a cute little sign for us and everybody was ready to receive a couple of coffee professionals, so admittedly we were a little overwhelmed.

First up we were served a Caturra Chemex and presented with an array of Colombian Christmas delicacies. The snacks were great, the coffee was fine, the weird caramel blancmange thing wasn’t exactly to my taste. Juan gave us a presentation about Caravela’s operations in Colombia, jumping from slide to slide with infectious enthusiasm. I learned a lot, Jess learned even more, but it was definitely a PowerPoint so my attention-deficit tendencies had me tapping my leg like crazy. My biggest takeaway from it was that Colombian seasons are all over the place, and getting even more varied with climate change. It’s a full-on operation that Caravela run, something I was soon to experience firsthand.

Next up we had a Skype call with producer Fabian Rojas. This was great! Juan acted as translator for us, and we talked for about an hour. We’d hoped to visit Fabian, but due to guerrilla activity around La Argentina we were advised it was a bad idea. It felt amazing to connect with a small producer we’ve been championing for years. We made a plan for a 3-year trade project and were all really excited about it. We continued chatting on WhatsApp and tried to buy his whole harvest this year, but it kind of fell apart at the last minute. We began price discussions when the market was at peak, then tried to renegotiate further down the line. It felt like the trust between us took a hit, and couldn’t easily be repaired remotely… I’ve learned a lesson from it and hope we can re-establish things with a more clear structure next year. I feel a bit down even writing about it tbh.

Then we cupped a shitload of incredible coffees and bought some bangers! This was amazing, so amazing. The team at Caravela were so on it—a level of professionalism that you just don’t see here, at least not in our office anyway. We spend a lot of time convincing people that coffee can be a rewarding career path, but cupping with all these wonderful and talented people still humbled me hard. The coffees were awesome, I think we picked some killers—they will probably have all sold out by the time this blog is finished, maybe the Jose Elcias is still available. I wanna say big respect to Jess here—she’s not a coffee person at all but picked all the killers from the selection nonetheless.

After our Caravela day we went out in Bogotá… it was a night of mixed experiences, mostly great. We definitely got a sharp reminder to stick to the tourist area though, when the cab driver told us if he hadn’t waited, I’d be dead! He was a legend.

 

Coffee Country - Primavera

We flew out to Armenia in Quindío. Leaving Bogotá by plane is epic, like you’re flying off the edge of the planet! Flying into Quindío was pretty special for me. It was the first time I’d seen coffee farming on a large scale outside of Vietnam, and it just hits harder when you know it’s Arabica. I was totally glued to the window trying to guess everything I could about all the rows and patios zooming by below. Nicolás Herrera met us at the airport—it was stupidly hot, and he was cool. He’d come to take us to Primavera dry mill, Caravela’s largest central milling facility.

I gotta be honest here, the Quindío heat was beautiful and we knew there was a pool at our hotel—we might not have gone into the day with the most relaxed attitude.

Primavera is a serious ting. As with the Bogotá office, we were greeted by an enthusiastic team, sat down at an airconned desk, and served up a Chemex. Nicolás wanted to talk business right away, I can’t remember what we discussed exactly apart from that it was about coffee, and probably buying coffee. I could sense Jess’s frustration as she looked longingly at the blue sky outside the window, and politely asked if we could get into the factory. Catching our drift, Nicolás handed us some safety equipment and reinjected excitement into the situation.

The mill was mental! The best way to describe it would be like a giant Mousetrap board that’s constantly being set off, but instead of marbles, the things rolling down and setting things off are tonnes of coffee, and the little plastic bits are giant hi-tech machines doing all manner of quality-improving functions. We walked around it for ages, our faces like that of children watching their first fireworks display—“oooh” and “aaaah”. It was sick, lemme break down a few highlights for you.

The colour sorter: Harley’s always chatting about getting a colour sorter, but not like this! So it’s like a room, in the middle of the Mousetrap trap, where there are cascades of green coffee coming down the wall. In this room is a lovely and dedicated lady, who trains laser/camera wind power sniper robots to shoot imperfect beans out of the cascade. Or at least that’s my understanding of it. So she figures out exactly the tiny colour differences that indicate defects, then she trains the machine to shoot air jets at them as the camera picks them up, and this happens at crazy high speeds because the coffee is cascading like a waterfall. Very nerdy cool.

The lorry loading blending bit: So trucks come in full of sacks, then the manager—who was also a legend—refers to their “recipe” for each field blend. Straight off the back of the trucks the crop gets fed into a grate on the floor, in ratios as specified by the sheet (i.e. 10 sacks from here + 15 from there). Then all the parchment gets hoovered up from underground and flies all over the shop like those little pods people on the tills put the cash in at Tesco, ending up in big old tonne bags on a winch system.

The bouncy beans sorting bit where Peebies comes from: There’s this big table thing with air blasting through it a bit like an air hockey board. It bounces all the beans up and down and sorts them into different size categories. We’re well into championing small screen sized beans as a way of offering high value speciality lots, so seeing them actually getting sorted this way was wicked, but mainly it was just a nice thing to watch… thousands of beans dancing around like the surface of the ocean, mesmerising!

The Bag Room/Manual Sorting: To finish off the tour we went through the second warehouse, where the sacks get printed. They have a full screen printing setup going full chat, every beautiful sack is hand printed. They let us have a go, it felt very Art Attack. The other thing in this warehouse was the manual sorting table - it’s pretty sweet, staff who are no longer able to do the heavy lifting in the main warehouse end up here sorting special lots by eye. It’s a way less intense job.

So that was it, we were now experts in coffee milling. This is where our attention began to wane. After lunch we went into the lab to learn about quality control and do another Cupping. We were pretty cooked by now, and kind of just went through the motions with it. I regret not being more enthusiastic, and I really hope the team didn’t catch the vibe as I was experiencing it, we were just gagging to get to a pool.

Coffee Country - El Fenix

Miguel told us to meet him in the square at Calarca - a little town not far from Armenia. We arrived at around 8am and ordered coffee from the kiosk he recommended. I am a basic bitch when it comes to my first coffee of the day, it’s always a flat white if a decent one’s available. It was absolutely peng, served in a tulip cup, little rosetta and a cheeky grin from the barista as he handed it to me. I absolutely love that look from a barista, you know that little giddy “this is good and in about two sips time we’ll both be on the same page about that” look. That feeling is so often missing in UK speciality sites - like by setting the expectation so high with all the gear and decor we ruin the sense that a beautiful cup is something special just for us. This is the spot - La Tertulia -  it’s sick.

Man, Miguel is a lovely dude. He made us feel super chill as soon as we met him - and started to get well excited to get stuck into some coffee farm business. After hitting up a couple of shops we were on our way out to the farm.

El Fenix is pretty spesh, we didn’t need much convincing of that. On our way up the hill Miguel filled us in a bit about the story - how and why they purchased the land - how his family's financial instability was a driving factor in its establishment. As I said we didn’t need much convincing - you can find a whole heap of info about it online via Raw Material. This section isn’t just about the farm, it’s about experiencing a speciality coffee farm for the first time. I think pictures will do a better job of describing the feelings than I can with words, so here are a load of photos from the couple of days we spent bumbling around the farm.

 

-Tasting fresh Arabica cherry for the first time - Gesha. It's pretty good, not like mind blowing, definitely a fruit, definitely better as a drink.

-Miguel teaching me how to plant Pink Bourbon. Definitely just a tourist experience ting, loved it. Everyone seemed pretty happy, we didn't feel like silly gringos quaking at all.

-Jess looking badass, she's a coffee professional now.

-You have to stamp in the soil around the saplings, it's like a little dance.

-Miguel Fajardo Mendoza - manager of El Fenix. This picture captures him exactly as I remember him taking us around the farm, super warm, sharing infectious excitement about all the varieties and projects.

-I took this photo on an Iphone, what the fuck, why is it so good. The coffee flowers were so beautiful and abundant. I think this was Wush Wush variety - gonna release some in the next couple of weeks.

-Banana trees for shade, Miguel told us loads of interesting stuff about where the shade is planted and how to space everything out. Lessons have been learned already about spacing between bushes, the Ethiopian varieties grow proper mad so you can barely move between them!

-Gesha from the top field, we were visiting between harvests so there wasn't an abundance of ripe cherry. We learned a bit about how the changing seasons are making it harder to predict peak harvesting times, meaning that it's pretty much year round you have to have pickers out. 

-Big old pile of Cascara for soil nutrients. El Fenix is pretty close to being organic, a lot of the planted areas have thick a layer of organic material decomposing on the ground.

 

-Patio drying the low grades - these coffees will eventually get sold at the commodity exchange in town. You see patios like this all over Colombia, the corrugated roof in the background rolls over to cover the patio in rain.

-Crackin! Found it intensely satisfying crunching parchment in my fingers.

-Out of shot is Miguel explaining how he uses the tubs for the Anoxic water pillow processing. Cherries goes in, tarp goes on, water on top.

 

-Sticky parchment - I think it's like a super light honey, but I can't remember tbh.

-Jess went for a nap, Miguel started roasting our samples to cup the following day. We hung out, I brewed up some of the coffee we'd bought at Caravela. It was really nice to chill after walking every inch of the farm. I had to admit that I know next to nothing about roasting coffee here, there was an issue with gas delivery to the sample roaster and I was utterly useless.

-Samples roasted. The light in the lab was beautiful - Notice that Jess has a Poker brand beer in her hand, I think it's the best lager in Colombia - nobody agrees.

 

-Golden hour here is something else.

 

I reckon that'll do, you get the picture. It was lush.

The farm grows Tabi, Gesha, Wush Wush, Sidra, Pink Bourbon and Iberica. We cupped a decent selection and purchased Tabi, Wush Wush, and Pink Bourbon. If you've made it this far you probably ought to buy some... so guess what, you can have a discount.

Use code: FUCKINGLONGBLOGPOST to get 15% off Miguels coffees.

Big shouts to Miguel, his beautiful family, and the whole community out at El Fenix who looked after us so well.

 

The Whole Rest of Colombia

One thing that's instantly noticeable to a coffee Professional in Colombia, is how serious coffee is. In the cities you can find incredible speciality shops and roasters, and everybody you come across in the industry is a lifer. The attitude is that of respect and empowerment, as if this isn't just a hot drink but a genuine way to achieve security and financial mobility. I know Colombia's pretty much a world leader when it comes to independent producers quality standards, and it was great to see how the infrastructure in place encourages it, but I was still taken aback to find myself surrounded by people with such deep understanding and passion for speciality.

We were supposed to go to El Jaragual and Quebraditas - we’ve bought a load of insane coffees from there too. It was super hard to get a translator sorted for Quabarditas, and we would’ve had to go back to Bogota to get that sorted so we gave it a miss. El Jaragual was really frustrating, we travelled half way across the county to get up there, then the ELN blew up a bunch of cars on the only road in and out.

Obviously Colombia is country with a pretty intense recent history, and although we visited without learning enough Spanish beforehand, I felt proud to have a bit of knowledge about the country's politics and instability before we went - not just Narcos. My reading certainly enhanced some aspects of the trip, and in some situations having an above tourist level interest in the region made things easier to digest. My work has taught me a bit about it over the years, and these two books both brought it to life on the trip, both fantastic reads:

There Are No Dead Here - A Story of Murder and Denial in Colombia

Che Guevara - A Revolutionary Life

I’d love to tell you about the ELN, wealth disparity, football madness, Jess getting yeeted off a horse, Tejo, roadblocks, Bahia Solano’s crazy airport, Anthony Bourdain’s Cazuela shack, jungle storm trekking, Antioquia Museum, beach partying and how none of the food comes with enough sauce. But I’ve done my bit, proven that I did some work, now you lot can buy the coffees.

Here's the route as well as I can remember it and draw it out - having location services on is bait.

Jasper Dumas 2025