The secret diary of a green coffee buyer aged 40 and 1/4
A trip around Central America Day 5 Amatitalan Guatamala
So we get to day 5 which I have marked out as a rest day. These trips have the potential to get very tiring, and very messy with so much to do. I also leave for El Salvador tomorrow, and I will be stopping at some friends houses, who I know do not have internet. The world of Has Bean still spins while I am n these trip and my email gets battered. So a day at the hotel, maybe a trip to cup somewhere, and a tour of some of the coffee shops would be just what the doctor ordered. But I am too stupid to do that. So ……
I make a phone call to one of my closest friends who happens to live in Guatemala city, a few of you may know him as th world barista champion 2012, I know him as Raul Rodas. I’ve always got along with Raul, and always enjoy haging out with him. Last time I saw him was in Milan where we went to see Milan vs Barcelona at the San Siro. This time it was because of coffee.
The reasons for this trip is to cement the relationships with the people we are buying directly from, and to talk about the coming crops / requirements.This is just one way of buying coffee though and we also buy from importers, for many reasons.
As you seen already this trip is fairly manic, I am just one man, so importers pick up the relationship management, and the sample export management, and also give me 30 days credit on invoice as opposed to having to stump up the cash first. All in all a useful service, with the right importer. And we have worked with one importer Mercanta since day one. This is where Raul comes in as he has just begun to work with this importer helping them to develop micro lots and find new and exciting coffees. I for one am very excited and happy about this and I know he will do an awesome job. Raul has already done this with his roasting company in Guatemala city finding some truly amazing lots from farms no one has ever heard of, coffee hunting.
So Raul picks me up from one of the coffee shops I always enjoy in Guatemala city, called El Injerto, owned by the farm with the same name, an award winning centre of excellence for coffee, and the coffee shop works on the same principle.s Great to see another specialist shop like this popping up in central america. We go to the new offices of Mercanta, where we get a chance to cup and catch up with my great friend Christian who manages the operations.
After this were in Rauls car and off to Finca El Bosque of the district of Amatitalan. A farm we have bought since 2006 (with the help of Mercanta) and somewhere I have visited twice before this, and always enjoyed my visits. We have for a number of years bought all the bourbon from this farm, and last year we bought all the crop.
Owned by the Flores brothers, they have everything going against them to make delicious tasty coffee. The urban sprawl of Guatemala City means the farm is getting impinged on by development. The whole farm is surrounded by houses and the city. The drying patios are behind a petrol station (owned by the family) on the main road from the city to Amatitilan, with lots of traffic, noise and pollution. Three years ago they had really bad weather that effected the production and the amounts of special coffee they had. Two years ago the volcano that over looks the farm erupted and spread ash and rocks everywhere damaging the plants and crop. This year they have a new problem, one called Roya.
I’m not going to explain here what or how roya is spread, but its a fungus infection of the leaf of the coffee plant. It leaves little specs of what looks like rust on the leaf, and attacks the plant. The plant needs its leave for photosynthesis and alike and if untreated will kill the plant. Francisco (one of the brothers) takes us to the famr to see what has happened and explain to us why.
Every year they take advice from Anacafe (the government run support for coffee growers) on how to protect from things like Roya. They did a fungal spray that keeps it at bay, and were very happy with the results. But Neighbours to the farm did not make that investment, and got leaf rust. The spores of the fungus are spread by the wind, so with the open breeze the get on top of a mountain, it spread, but spread around September / October time which is too soon to spray the fungicide to the harvest of the crop.
Its certainly not the worst case of Roya I have seen but it is a sign of whats to come on the next leg of my trip, as El Salvador has been hit far worse than anywhere else for Roya.
Francisco tells us although ll of this the early signs are the crop will be tasting as good as ever, and they hope once the harvest is in to get it all under control, but should leae them with a 20-30% drop in what was expected. Its a tough time to be a producer.
Not a bad rest day.
