The secret diary of a green coffee buyer aged 40 and 1/4
A trip around Antigua Guatemala Day 4
Day four and I’m in the old spanish colonial city of Antigua. A beautiful and amazing city thats looks like its been stuck in time. A hot tourist spot the city is surrounded by volcanoes (one still active). Antigua used to be the capital city of Guatemala (in fact go back even further central america). The city has a history of being moved around a lot due to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. This got so bad that the Spanish Crown ordered, in 1776, the removal of the capital to a safer location, the Valley of the Shrine, where Guatemala City, the modern capital of Guatemala, now stands.
The pace of Guatemala I can already tell will be much slower than the chaotic (but fun) two days in Costa Rica. I have three days here and three farms to see (and two of them today), Costa rica I’d have done them all in an hour.
I have two opposite ends of the spectrum farms to visit in Antigua, both of them very important coffees from last year, but two very very different growers. This was not a plan at the start, and thats because I couldn’t plan this so perfectly if I tried, but gives us a chance to show both ends of the coffee producer scale in one amazing micro region.
The first stop is to a coffee shop in the centre of the town to meet an old friend of last year Alex Illescas of Los Jocotales. Alex supplied us with super interesting honey processed varietals last year, and went down very well. Alex is a small grower, and has been given a chance by his family to manage and market the farm to buyers like us. Last year Alex dried all of his coffee on the roof of his uncles house. This was cute, but proved problematic in getting the coffee dried in time. In fact so much so that it delayed our container from Guatemala by 6 weeks and meant we only got half the coffee we had agreed on.
So this meeting was to sit down with Alex and see how realistic it would be to get the coffee ready in time and in the quantity we wanted whilst maintaining the amazing quality he had been working with.
The first news from Alex was that his uncle had built on top of his house, so his drying patios were no longer. But he had already decided that this year he would be moving the drying from the roof to some patio space he has been able to rent at one of the local farms / mills, so he can process the quantity, maintain the involvement with the processing so he can improve the quality. He is only in a position to do this because of the high prices we paid last year, and the prices we have agreed this. This makes me very happy and proud that we can be part of this farms and family’s development. Also because of the relationship were building we are also helping with some pre financing of the coffee which is the first time we have been asked and have been able to do this, all part of working as a team. Because of the tight schedule we didn’t have time to go to the farm this year, but Alex has promised to keep us in touch with how the picking and processing goes.
From here I go to see a special friend from last year from the farm San Sebastian. San sebastian is a huge farm spanning of 800 hectors with over 400 of those containing coffee. This time of year in the peak season the farm employes around 800 workers, and produces over 8000 bags of fine Antiguan coffee. The scale of this farm amazes me, it amazed me last year and so too this. What they have realised is that there are many buyers out there, each of them lookig for different things, and they see their job as to match make coffee.
Our host for the day Edgar shows us the patios and around the storage facilities of the farm, then invites us for a delicious lunch with him. The house is right at home in antigua a spanish colonial wooden house thats beautiful. After this fine food all I want is a Siesta (a tradition I think we should employ in the UK much more) but we have no time, its not the chance to go around the farm with Edgar and the farm manager of whats can only be called a quad bike with real seats, and we drive all around seeing the new plantings and seeing the cleared areas. We go to see the Pacamara plantation that proved so popular last year with you lot, and we have already agreed a european exclusive on this coffee for this year.
Then up to the very top of the mountain to an amazing viewing platform where we get a bird eye view of the drying patios and the surrounding volcanoes. Here is a great chance to record this weeks in my mug that will be released this weekend, and I am sure will be hugely watched as Edgar is engaging and charming. We then dive down to patios and finish off the video with a tasting too. Before leaving I get chance to see the cherries arriving from the days picking and am blown away at the skill of the pickers, everything purple and ripe.
As my time in Antigua comes to an end I begin to look forward to a rest day tomorrow, until I foolishly decide to phone up my good friend Raul who is the World Barista Champion of 2012 and ask if he is free tomorrow to take me to Amatitalan to visit the Flores Brothers of El Bosque. A coffee that we have loved and enjoyed for many many years now, and somewhere I have not visited for a few years. We will see how that pans out, otherwise day five may be a little quite.
