On my trip to Colombia this summer, I was lucky enough to be invited as a judge for a Concurso de Taza or Cup Contest hosted by Coocentral Coop in Garzón, Huila. A small panel including myself and two lovely Aussies joined the coop’s head cupper, José Jadir Losada, in cupping our way through 30 coffees over two days. This contest was designed to showcase the local farmers’ coffees, and the financial reward provided an incentive to produce the best cup possible. Knowing that this contest and our results would put extra food on someone’s table or provide more clothing or schooling or simply some good ol’ fashioned fun, we took our job seriously.
Before we get to the coffee, a bit of background on the grand work Coocentral is doing for its members is very much worth a mention. Coocentral was established in 1975 with 55 members and has now grown to more than 3,000 members and they keep pouring in. This growth in itself illustrates how well integrated the coop is into the farmers’ livelihood. On a basic level, Coocentral works much like a bank and is even set up in a similar fashion. The green buyer pays the coop directly, and Coocentral in turn gives a portion directly to the farmer and a portion gets put back into projects and programs to support and improve producer communities. When a quality premium is paid for a particularly tasty cup, it is presented in the form of a giant check given to the farmer publicly in order to provide incentive for other farmers to keep working hard and to demonstrate that the initial sacrifice made for quality is greatly rewarded.
One of the most important services through Coocentral is their offering of credit during those very difficult months in between harvest cycles, more commonly known as los meses flacos or literally “the thin months.” As many are aware, these months are a hardship on farmers, to say the least, especially for those who do not have any other crops to supplement their income and rely almost entirely on coffee. When the money they are paid for their harvest runs out, they have no choice but to wait until next harvest to even make a penny. In swoops Coocentral who provides a credit system for farmers to utilize during this time to feed, clothe, educate, and medically attend to their families. Thanks to many private buyers who pay well above any minimums and market levels, during the harvest season farmers make sufficient money to pay back these accumulated debts and still have enough left over to support their families.
Coocentral funds a wide variety of programs and support systems. Of the income made from coffee, a portion goes directly to a fund to support wives and children, a portion to the coop, which is put back into these projects and community improvements, a portion in cash to the producer, and the remainder is put into a personal savings account for the farmer to save for future expenses, education, etc. For full members, the coop also covers 100% of the family’s health insurance premiums and 50% for partial members. Additionally, the producers and their families pick and choose how Coocentral spends on improvements. If a family would like to have a patio put in on their house instead of a dirt floor, that’s what they get. If another family prefers to have a kitchen remodeled, so be it. There is much communication and community connection between the farmers and their centralized coop.
In Garzón, there is no central wet mill to sell cherry; instead, these small land-holders each have their own micro-mill on site. Once the beans are pulped, they are sold to Coocentral either in wet or dry pergamino, although the transportation of wet can be risky, and it brings a lower price. Coocentral is in the process of building a brand new drying plant (different than a dry mill) where wet pergamino can be efficiently dried in higher quantities.
Once dried, each coffee is cupped by José and his team who cup over and over, and I mean anywhere from 20 to 150 samples are cupped a day! These samples are classified based on cup quality to be sold either as a micro or macro lot.
Which brings me to our lovely Café Imports selected microlots…
The cups in the contest overall were round and full with chocolate and spice notes enhanced by a caramel sweetness and slight fruit notes. Later, we cupped these same lots in our Café Imports cupping room at a lighter roast when the fruit acidity popped much more than it did on the ground in Colombia. Versatile cups! After two days of slurping, spitting, re-roasting, cupping again and again, we finally got the cups ranked and selected a winner! Upon cupping these lots at Café Imports, we decided to bring in all of them and still have 13 lots available to pre-book. See IDs P3691-3693 and P3678-3690 for availability and get in touch with anyone in sales if you are interested.
Many thanks and appreciations are extended to Coocentral and its hard working staff. Without this kind of hard work on the ground in producing countries, we would not see such high quality coffee and many farmers would be without any support system, let alone such a solid one. Salud to Coocentral!
-Sally
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