In the beginning of 2023, it seemed like the world was starting to return a little bit back to normal after COVID-19 hit. We were doing better financially as a company, which was from such strong support from our local NP & OX communities. Sarah & I were very excited to have such a great leadership team at Ragamuffin & we wanted to do something together that would help grow us in our more in our specialty coffee community. We were thinking of going to visit a farm with our leadership team, but we had been recently invited to pour our coffee at some of our importer’s booths at the SCA Expo in Portland. We decided that we should take our roastery team & our lead cafe team with us to share our coffees at the biggest event in specialty coffee. It was here that our team would pour coffee alongside some of the best roasters in the world alongside of some great farmers & importers. The day before we headed to Portland, I reached out to a few of our farmer friends to see if they were going to be there so we could introduced them to our team. Three of them were going to be there, one being Jeanine from JNP coffee (whom we met as we cupped their coffees), Marcus from Adaura Coffee, (Panama) & the other, my buddy Andres! We were all pretty tired when we first got there since we had all been working hard & prepping to leave for the event. But when we met Andres, it was like being hit with a jolt of energy from how passionate he was in talking with our group & sharing about his work & hearing more about our team at Ragamuffin. It was great times watching Ragamuffin team members meet & interact with someone who was working to help Ragamuffin source amazing coffees & build relationships with farmers to work with in Colombia. We shared meals, partied at LaMarzocco’s giant cosmic themed party, & had late night hangs during those 4 days. Our teams had a blast spending time together & we couldn’t wait to finally take Andres up on his offer for us to visit him in Coffee Paradise. After 4 years of friendship and working together, on May 5, 2024, my dream of visiting a coffee farm at origin in South America had finally come true!
Andrew, Joel, & I had just landed in Armenia, Colombia after 8 hours of flying & a layover in Panama City. Years of looking at a Google Maps with location markers where Andres had shown me his coffee lab was and where his family farm was and the area where amazing coffee was being produced by great people working with A Coffee Family were about to come to life. Andres welcomed us into his country with open arms as we exited the airport. We introduced him to Joel, as Andrew & I already knew Andres and you could tell that while we were all pretty tired, we were going to have a blast on this great adventure together.
To be honest, this origin trip really was a blur of coffee activity. Andres shared more about our itinerary as he drove us to the A Coffee Family Coffee lab and farm located about 20 min from the airport. We drove through the city streets of Armenia to a muddy road weaving through the farmland on the outskirts of the city, at an elevation of 5089’. When we arrived, we met Nathalie, Andres' right hand who helps handle all of the travel itinerary, logistics and coffee lab work and whom we would be traveling alongside of for the next 5 days. They prepared for us our first round of coffee to taste on the patio overlooking the farmland and mountains towering on the tropical horizon. We welcomed the wonderful taste of coffee, ate some lunch, and then began touring the farm where the lab is located. Walking in the humidity through the bright green trees and bright blue sunny skies took me right back to other trips I’ve been on to South America over a decade ago. This time though, tasting bright violet red coffee cherries right off the tree brought me a sense of being at a larger version of Rancho Filoso back home, and a much welcomed sense of feeling like I was right where I was supposed to be, surrounded by a field of this coffee arabica plant in the mountains of Colombia.
I could not have asked for a more hands on learning experience for our team than this origin trip. Andres & Nathalie gave us a tour of the lab, walked around the processing facility and wash station on site where their team washes the cherry skin & mucilage off of the coffee seeds for their washed coffees, saw their drying racks & drying beds for washed and natural coffees, learned and participated with them on hulling coffee on site and then roasted samples with them to bring along our journey to coffee farms in the Salamina region.
We traveled along a long small highway road winding up and down, curving left & right, cutting through the mountains toward Salamina where we would spend the next two full days in the land where our new coffees were being grown. Along the way we visited their nursery where they are growing rare and exciting baby coffee trees on a hillside about 3 hours from the coffee lab. About half an hour later we were near what felt like the top of the world, high above the mountains in what was one of the steepest mountain roads I think I’ve ever been on. Here we met Gerardo Medina and his wife Cecilia Lopez at their coffee farm, Finca la Telaraña. Cecilia had made us one of my favorite dishes of the trip, what was essentially the biggest chicken tamale I’ve ever seen, cooked in banana leaves. Sitting cross legged on the coffee drying patio at Telaraña, we shared a meal with one of the best views in the world, overlooking the mountains of the coffee farm and the valley of Salamina below. As we ate, we spent our time together talking about coffee growing practices and hearing about Gerardo & Cecilia’s heart for the environment and the importance of sustainable, bio-dynamic soil, earth friendly growing practices and the desire to work with coffee roasters who care about similar things. We realized the world is a whole lot smaller as we continued to talk and tour their farm. This was a family we at Ragamuffin were excited to work with.
We then traveled another hour, back down the winding mountain and back up to the town of Salamina to have dinner at Andres' family home where his mother welcomed us in with open arms and had prepared another amazing meal for us to share late into the night. So much great food and beautiful conversations were shared throughout our travels that evening and I left there promising Andres’ mom that someday soon I would bring my wife so she could meet her too. We ended the night traveling to Andres family farm, La Palma, where we would spend the next two nights in the outskirts of the town of Salamina.
The next day we toured La Palma, tasted rare pink bourbon & geisha coffee cherries that are being grown at one of the highest elevations in Colombia, at and above an elevation of 2000 meters! I will share more about this farm soon as we have some of these super rare varietals arriving in a few months to share with you at Ragamuffin, but what I can say is that we were extremely excited to walk among the trees and see the work that Andres is doing first hand on his families farm. The coffees that are being grown here are truly exceptional and we believe are some of the best coffees in the world. More on that later!
Andres & Nathalie then took us up the winding roads, four wheeling across a river and then up another side of the mountain to Finca la Azucena where we would meet award winning coffee producers Don Victor Narvaez and his wife Doňa Patricia Victoria. Again, we could not ever repay the hospitality of our hosts because of just how much care they offered us as strangers coming into their home. Patricia had made an exceptional chicken soup meal that I will also remember the rest of my life. We ate together sitting in their kitchen and dining area of their family home, hearing about their family and their farm and the good and the hard parts of living and farming so high in the mountains of Salamina. We learned that just about 5 months prior, during a heavy rain storm in the area, as they were driving to the weekly farmers market down the mountain, their car malfunctioned and caused an accident which wrecked their only automobile, tragically took the life of Don Victor’s mother, and caused a difficult and long-lasting physical injury to Don Victor that he is still healing from. In meeting them, with the joy they shared with us, you would have never known that they had experienced such hardship so recently. It was an amazing honor for me to meet such a strong and peaceful family. For me, personally, as I was preparing pour overs for us to share together after our meal, I caught a glimpse in my mind of us working together long into our future. In this moment I experienced an overwhelming emotion of joy and honor in being able to serve coffee to Patricia and Victor. It was here that I truly saw how much bigger coffee is than just a cup of coffee and I witnessed the unavoidable truth that coffee really does bring people together.
Another late night at La Palma spending time with Andres & Nathalie on the patio, bbq-ing chicken on an open fire brought lots of conversation about life, farming, coffee, & cafe life. We went to bed full of good experiences, great food and the best of friendship. The whirlwind travel beginning the next morning brought us many hours back to the cupping table of A Coffee Lab near Armenia. Here Nathalie and Andres were hulling & roasting coffees from Finca la Azucena and Alba, (another amazing A Coffee Family assistant) prepared the night’s cupping for us. While I was absolutely exhausted from all of the traveling and experience so far, I was beginning to be energized by the fact that we were going to blind taste coffees from the hard work of the people we had just met and some from other farmers that A Coffee Family is working alongside of. Throughout a blitz of cupping nearly 40 coffees that night and the next morning, we realized just how special the work the A Coffee Family is doing. The hard work that our new coffee producing friends are doing alongside the strong effort of Andres, Nathalie, Alba (and the rest of their team) are putting into producing exceptional Colombian coffees was evident throughout the cupping. We are excited to share the results of their work with you on a daily basis.
I will never forget this trip, nor will I forget the friendship and community that we at Ragamuffin Coffee Roasters are forming with some absolutely amazing people in Colombia. We are also super excited to share with you that you can now enjoy these coffees at Ragamuffin, either at our cafes and at home by bringing home our retail bags. The next chance you get, please take a few moments to check out Patricia and Victor’s washed process coffee from Finca la Azucena and the adventurous 120hr anaerobic natural processed coffee from Gerardo and Cecilia’s Finca la Telaraña. We look forward to hearing what you think about these beautiful coffees and hope we were able to share a little more about where they come from. Lastly, I’d like to thank you for continuing to choose Ragamuffin knowing that your purchase is making a lasting difference in the lives of people both in Ventura County and throughout the coffee farming world high up in the mountains of Salamina, Colombia!