See a slide show from my trip at http://www.flickr.com/photos/newharvest/sets/72157613170471329/show/

Day 1 Wednesday Jan 14

Newark to Mesa de los Santos, Colombia

It’s a long row to hoe. Providence to Newark to Miami to Bogata to Bucaramanga to Los Santos. Troy and Jaime join me in Newark. We’re greeted by a dose of fresh, thin air in Bogata. Troy immediately sets out on a quest for aguardiente, the legendarily potent anise liqueur, while I frustrate the woman behind the glass at the money exchange with my long-degraded Spanish. It’s really bad. After I finally acquire some pesos, I find a couple blocking my way up the stairs to the food court. Spanish for “excuse me”, anyone? I make some weird grunting noise as the rusty gears turn in my head, and they get the idea: give way for the strange mute man.

Pardone me? Con permiso? I’m still not really sure. In any case, I survive the Bogata airport terminal, and finally meet Oswaldo Acevedo, the owner of Mesa de los Santos. Oswaldo lives in Bogata, and will be accompanying us on our final leg to Bucaramanga and the farm itself. We’re also joined by Max and Jennifer from Royal Coffee CA.

After we land in Bucaramanga, we pile into a couple of SUVs for the long ascent up the Mesa. Troy and I ride with Oswaldo, with Javier at the wheel. After an hour or so of steep switchbacks, we arrive at Mesa—known locally as Hacienda El Roble. We are staying at the main house, a 150+ year-old white stucco beauty with a lush courtyard garden. After a late dinner of a light egg soup festooned with fresh savory herbs, we end a long, long day with a fair amount of anticipation for what sights sunrise will bring.

Day 2 Thursday Jan 15

Mesa de los Santos, Colombia

Daylight does not disappoint, as we wake to a landscape that is simultaneously wild and supremely ordered. The weather at Mesa de los Santos is perfect for human life. Warm, sunny mornings raise the temperature into the mid 70s, and right at lunchtime the wind starts whipping across the Mesa, maintaining optimal conditions. In fact, Oswaldo credits the wind for stressing his coffee trees a bit and concentrating sugars in the cherries, producing a sweeter cup.

After breakfast, Oswaldo and his farm manager Fermin begin the tour in the nursery. There we find the expected—shiny green leaves of thousands of perfect coffee seedlings—and something else. Interspersed with the Bourbon and Caturra coffee plants are thick beds of aromatic herbs: oregano, basil, lavender, lemongrass, anise, mint and many others I can’t quite identify. Oswaldo stops at each bed and invites us to crumble a leaf under our noses. I’ve tried to grow a few herb gardens in my time, but nothing I’ve grown produces the kind of culinary perfume these plants do.

And the irony: these redolent herbs are natural pesticides, carefully arranged to dissuade insects from finding a meal in the tender young leaves of the coffee seedlings. Luckily, a few of them will also find their way into the Mesa kitchen during our stay.

After soaking up the nursery, we head into the “fields”. That’s a misnomer, of course, because great coffee does not grow in fields. What we see is a dense rainforest, with a riot of birdsong echoing off cedar, oak and galapo trees (and many others I can’t begin to name). Well below the leafy canopy, the forest floor is dotted with 4’ to 8’ tall coffee trees, with their distinctive british-racing-green leaves, and green, red and yellow coffee cherries.

The constellation of fruit colors, even on the same branch, is our first glimpse of the immense labor that makes great coffee possible. Unlike virtually every other food crop of note, coffee must be picked by hand, and carefully at that. At Mesa, only the ripe red cherries (and the occasional yellow Bourbon) are picked. Each cherry holds two coffee beans, and it takes about 4,000 beans to make a pound of roasted coffee. Each coffee tree produces about one pound of coffee per season. Good to know. Regardless of the price we pay as roasters, retailers or consumers, we can all agree to one thing: coffee is a precious thing.

Then we head down to the coffee garden. Here Oswaldo is growing 75 different varieties of coffee (a variety is a subspecies of coffea arabica; the Colombian Don Telmo coffee we roast at New Harvest is the Bourbon variety), with an eye on planting “microlots” of really special beans. It’s a fascinating experiment. The garden includes every imaginable variety from around the world, all grown under identical conditions.

Even better, we are going to have the opportunity to taste 45 of them. More on this later.

After another delicious meal prepared by Miriam and Juliana, we set out for the Los Santos school, just outside the gate to the farm. The school holds about 600 students, from kindergarten to 11^th grade (the Colombian equivalent of our 12^th grade). We are all impressed by the passion of the staff, and gratified to see the fruits of our importer’s longstanding support of the Mesa de los Santos region. The generosity of Royal Coffee is self-evident, from the basketball court to the computers and microscopes.

Our next stop is the Big Show: the beneficio, or wet mill. Once coffee has been picked, speed is essential. It must be depulped, fermented, washed and dried quickly, to ensure the highest quality.

Here’s how it works: At the end of the day, pickers bring in between 400 and 800 lbs. of cherry, per person (depending on the season). Fermin or one of the other supervisors weigh each sack of cherry, and the pickers are paid by the kilo. The ripe cherry is loaded into the wet mill. First any green fruit and “floaters” (low-density, less favorable beans that float on the water) are removed. The remaining cherries are then depulped, with the fruit sloughed off into a dump truck to be taken to the composting sheds and the beans and water are pumped into fermentation tanks.

After the coffee has been depulped, it still has a sticky “mucilage” that needs to be removed. This is where fermentation comes in. The coffee will remain in the tanks for about 12 hours, which is enough time for the mucilage to break down but not so long that the fermentation process effects the flavor of the coffee itself.

After fermentation, the coffee is washed and dried.. At Mesa, some coffee is dried in the sun on wood-framed screens, but the majority of the beans are dried using mechanical dryers. At the end of the drying cycle, what we know as coffee beans are still surrounded by a husk, or “pergamino”. This pergamino goes in burlap bags and is stored temporarily in the bodega, or resting room. The coffee sits here for a couple of weeks, until it reaches a relative humidity of about 10 or 11%. Once it reaches the desired humidity, the coffee is sent to a dry mill in Bucaramanga, where the husk is removed (the husks are returned to Mesa where it is used to fuel the mechanical dryers). A final sorting is done at this point to remove defective beans. Then the final product—green coffee—is loaded into 69 kilo bags, placed into a container and shipped—to a roaster near you.

Mesa Cupping Competition

There are two main species, arabica and robusta. Arabica is typically high-grown (above 1,000 meters), and is noted for its mild, sweet flavor. Robusta grows at lower altitudes, is a hardier plant and is notoriously bitter and unpleasant. Pretty much every specialty coffee roaster only deals with arabica coffee.

It doesn’t stop there, however. Coffea Arabica is a dynamic plant, with many more varieties than wine grapes. Some common examples are Caturra, Typica and Bourbon. Each variety has its own distinct characteristics, as we experience personally on our first day at Mesa. The coffee garden I mentioned earlier is home to 75 different varieties, all grown under identical conditions. Over our two day stay at Mesa, we will be cupping and grading 45 of them, and Oswaldo plans to put the top two or three finishers into production.

It’s an intense exercise, with high stakes. We cup three flights of 15 coffees, and choose 10 finalists for a championship cupping at the end of the second night. The coffees are all over the place during the three preliminary rounds. We are scoring on a scale of 1 to 100 (100 being the unattainable best), and the scores dip as low as 40 and as high as 96. The lower scoring coffees are fairly uniform in their attributes: woody, vegetal, salty, walnut, potato, fermented.

The top scorers, however, each enjoy unique profiles and flavors. This is what makes great coffee so phenomenal. Here are some flavor notes on some of these coffees:

3^rd Round PrelimWinner: peach cobbler, strawberry rhubarb, blueberry, clove, chocolate, cinnamon.

3^rd Round, 2^nd Place: papaya and orange peel aroma, vanilla, caramel, banana, tropical fruit flavors.

Final Round, 2^nd Place: peach and floral aroma, light red wine, raspberry and strawberry flavors, rich acidity.

Final Round, Overall Winner: strawberry and toffee aroma, floral in the cup, syrupy body, dark chocolate, nutty, orange zest, balanced.

And no, I can’t reveal their identities. But some of these will be planted shortly, and once the trees start producing cherries in about four years, we will be roasting these coffees.

Day 3 Friday Jan 16

Mesa de los Santos, Colombia

We start the day at sunrise, with a birdwatching tour. Mesa is home to 126 species of birds, giving new meaning to the term “bird-friendly”. Much of the region has actually been deforested. Outside of Oswaldo’s farm, the landscape is dominated by poultry and cattle farms, and housing developments. The coffee farm is an oasis, a sanctuary for all manner of flora and fauna.

After the birds, we return to the lab for the third preliminary round of the cupping competition. Now thoroughly caffeinated, it is of course time to ride horses. Now, I have only ridden a horse once before in my life, which was five minutes of terror at summer camp when I was 9. So I’m a little nervous, especially when I draw the biggest mount. She’s dark brown and feisty. Let’s call her Ring of Fire.

I get on Ring of Fire, and things seem fine. I’m sitting on a horse, no big deal. Then we head out. It turns out I have the Alpha horse—she absolutely needs to be at the front of the line. I have a hard enough time keeping my hiking boots in the stirrups, holding the reins and keeping the unraveling tether from getting tangled up in the horse’s legs, and all she wants to do is run.

We eventually achieve equipoise, and I even let her get up a gallop a few times during the two hour ride up and down the rutted trails of Mesa. I certainly would have won the “race” back to the stable if Troy hadn’t gotten a headstart when Jennifer and I turned back to find the wayward Max and Jaime.

After a ridiculous dismount (my horse-muscles are plainly in disrepair), Oswaldo takes us for a more solicitous ride (in cars) to see Chichamocha Canyon. Chichamocha is a 4,000 foot deep canyon that marks the edge of Mesa de los Santos, and it is a striking site. When we return, we cup the final round of coffees, and select a winner. Champagne is poured and another delicious dinner is served, followed by the medicinal application of gin on the rocks. It has been a good day.

Day 4 Saturday Jan 17

Mesa de los Santos to San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

Today we jump from Bucaramanga to Bogata to San Jose, Costa Rica and finally arrive in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. The sun does not follow us, however, and we are greeted with three days of rain.

In SPS, we meet the folks from Lafayette College who have been working with the residents of the small village of Lagunitas, Honduras for several years in fostering economic and social development. They assisted Lagunitas in constructing a water filtration system and forming a cooperative of 13 families to work towards entrepreneurship and improving living standards in the village.

Fluney Hutchinson, economics professor at Lafayette, leads the group, which is comprised of four undergraduates on this trip, Lori, Katie, Jackie and Nick. Lori will also be serving as our interpreter during our time in Honduras, and she will be working hard over the next few days. There is a lot to talk about.

Also joining us in SPS are Sergio and Oskar, who work for IHCAFE, the Honduran national Coffee Board. They will fill a crucial role, in evaluating the prospects for coffee production at Lagunitas, as well as connecting us with other growers hoping to export their coffee to the United States. And—they will also being driving us all over the place.

Day 5 Sunday Jan 18

San Pedro Sula to Yoro, Honduras

Lagunitas is located in the province of Yoro, about 75 miles southeast of SPS, in the rural interior of Honduras. Once we pass through the town of El Progreso, about 15 miles outside of SPS, the concrete highway largely gives way to dirt roads. Even through the rain and the mist, Honduras reveals itself as a beautiful country, covered with steep mountain passes and undisturbed rain forest.

We arrive in Lagunitas in the early afternoon, and are immediately introduced to the members of the cooperative (Manos Unidas). After Fluney and Lori catch up with the members on the news since their last visit, we head out to their coffee nursery. It’s about a half-hour walk up and down a muddy track, across a stream and up another hill. Jaime comments on the fecundity of the environment—“anything will grow here”. And it’s true; the forest floor is thick with growth, and the canopy is nearly oqaque.

After we visit the nursery, we return to the village for a meeting. This is when Fluney and Lori set to work. The Lagunitas project is not one where grants or loans are made without consideration of internal or external conditions. Manos Unidas wants to produce coffee, even build their own beneficio, but Fluney wants to make sure that this is the right choice for them. He turns to Jaime, Troy and I for guidance about the coffee market in the United States, and Lori in turn communicates this to Manos Unidas.

Jaime in particular is extremely helpful. He has traveled to origin many times, and knows what it takes to produce good specialty coffee. The altitude of Lagunitas (900 meters) is on the low side, and the variety of coffee they are growing is an unknown. With 13 families, their production is likely to be quite small. It becomes clear that building a beneficio may not be the best use of their resources.

That said, they may still want to pursue coffee production, and use an established beneficio at another cooperative to wet mill their coffee. Jaime makes the point that Manos Unidas needs to know what price they can expect to get for their coffee before deciding to move forward.

As the sun sets, we squeeze back into the IHCAFE trucks and head into Yoro City, where we will stay for the night. As it happens, we make back in time to see the Steelers eliminate the Ravens.

Day 6 Monday Jan 19

Yoro to Las Vegas to Yoro, Honduras

We are met in Yoro City by Francisco Castillo, the regional coordinator of Cortes and Yoro provinces for IHCAFE. We head south for La Victoria and ultimately Las Vegas, home to Cooperativa 25 de Julio.

25 de Julio has 43 members and produces 400 bags (60,800 lbs) of certified organic coffee per year. Currently all of 25 de Julio’s coffee is aggregated with coffee from other cooperatives, and is sold for export under a generic label. Sometimes they have to deal with coyotes: middlemen who pay a low upfront price for their production. 25 de Julio is exactly the sort of cooperative that I would love to source directly, paying a fair price and in the process establishing an ongoing relationship.

So I’m excited by the prospects raised by our meeting with 25 de Julio. Jaime, Troy and I all make presentations about our respective positions in the American specialty coffee market. I talk about how important Fair Trade Certified coffee has been for us at New Harvest in the past, but also about how we urgently want to move beyond it. I say that Fair Trade is a label, but what we really want—and what our customers really want—is a good connection to growers. We want to pay a fair price and see its effect: on the quality of the coffee, and on the quality of life for the people who grow it.

Our meeting is upbeat and productive. We head up the muddy hill to see the beneficio, and we are not disappointed. It’s a very clean operation, with separate processing facilities for organic and transitional coffees and well-tended solar dryers for drying the coffee after depulping and fermentation. From there, we hike down to see the coffee on the trees. 25 de Julio grows their coffee at between 1,200 and 1,300 meters, under the shady canopy of old-growth cedar and gingko trees. Most of their coffee is of the Bourbon and Typica varieties, and is certified organic by Biolatina, a leading international certifying agency.

Jaime, Troy and I are all energized by what we have seen and heard at 25 de Julio. Sourcing coffee direct from Honduras does not feel all that remote.

We return to the hotel in Yoro City well after dark. There we meet Maira Gerente, president of COMISUYL, a large cooperative also based in Yoro province. The production by COMISUYL is large scale –380,000 lbs per year—but their processing practices are decidedly small scale. They do not have a central beneficio for wet-milling their coffee. Instead, each member of the coop pulps the coffee they harvest using a small hand-cranked mill and ferments it using their own personal fermentation tanks. The coop delivers the coffee to the exporter with 45% humidity—quite high. The exporter completes the drying process.

We will not have time to visit COMISUYL, but Maira is an enthusiastic proponent of her coffee. We will meet her again tomorrow at IHCAFE headquarters in San Pedro Sula, and have the opportunity to cup her coffee.

Day 7 Tuesday Jan 20

Yoro to San Pedro Sula, Honduras

We see peeks of sun as we leave Yoro. We are headed to IHCAFE’s main facility in SPS, where we tour their lab facilities, try some coffees and have a final meeting to talk about the process of bringing Honduran coffee to our customers.

IHCAFE HQ is impressive. Honduras has the environment to produce great coffee—the same as Guatemala and Costa Rica, which have enjoyed sterling reputations for years. The folks at IHCAFE know this, and they are making the investment to make it happen. Ella shows us around the soil and water testing labs, and to the scene of last year’s Honduras Barista Championship. Ana Lucia Lardizabal de Hawit, last year’s Honduran champion, went on to finish 15^th at the World Barista Championship—the highest finisher from Latin America.

We head into the cupping lab. IHCAFE has an impressive array of Probat sample roasters, and they put them in service roasting the coffees we will be cupping. Two of the three samples are from Cooperativa 25 de Julio and COMISUYL. The coffees are a little fresh, both in terms of how recently the coffee was harvested and in just being roasted. Green coffee matures and mellows during export and storage, and we prefer to give roasted coffee at least 24 hours of resting time before we cup it. Nevertheless, this experience is all about potential—and it is there, in the cup.

Day 8 Wednesday Jan 21

San Pedro Sula, Honduras

At Jaime’s suggestion, we squeeze in one more meeting in the morning before we leave. This is with Munir Hawit, owner of Cafex, a leading dry mill and coffee exporter. It turns out Munir exports coffee produced by 25 de Julio and COMISUYL, in addition to coffee from his own farm in Yoro, Finca Santa Marta. Santa Marta also won first place in the 2006 Honduras Cup of Excellence competition, scoring 91.41 and fetching a price of $6.70 per pound.

Munir is quite open about the challenges faced by Honduran coffee. There are frequently breakdowns somewhere along the chain—picking, depulping, washing, fermentation and drying—that reduce the quality of the final product. Drying in particular has been an issue, which accounts for IHCAFE efforts to build solar dryers at coops like 25 de Julio. Munir also cited the need for Hondurans in the coffee industry to improve their cupping skills, to better appreciate the flavor characteristics prized in the American specialty market.

Again, like everything else we experienced in Honduras, there is a desire to improve quality and seek direct relationships—exactly what we wanted to hear.