An Excursion to Colombia in February 2005 -Page 3

...you are on the last leg of the trip! (back to page 1, back to page 2)

You might think tasting coffee at a nature retreat in a verdant countryside setting, amid butterfly gardens, orchid blooms and pine forests is ideal. An inspirational environment, serene beauty, dewy mornings, fine coffee. So why does this place feel like a white collar prison? Well, let’s see … when you drive in you pass through 2 separate manned security stations. That’s sorta prison-like. In the evenings there is a black-booted kid with a machine gun in the lobby. The food is of that universally non-specific “institutional” variety. It reeks of quantity, belonging to the “Food for 50+” family of cuisine. And there’s this sense in the evening that you are just trying to kill time, playing cards, chatting, until you are tired enough to sleep.

It’s a place called Recinto de Pensamiento (Retreat for Thinking?), and ecological outpost, an orchid path, interpretive trails, a pasture with sheep and alpaca, a micro coffee farm of about 200 trees. Surprisingly, the high fences are only in the front. It backs up to a hillside and there’s only cattle fencing there. You can pick up the caritera and hike up until it ends in myriad footpaths, eventually opening up into hilltop cattle pasture. Thank god this Thinking Box is just 3 sided.

Roaming the Pensamiento each morning (with camera) ...

In case you wonder why people would travel in Colombia, given the dangers (real or imagined) this should address the question; it is BEAUTIFUL!

I wake up early to walk each morning. Cupping starts at 8:30 Colombian time, which is 5:30 Emeryville time. Somehow I have adjusted though. The first 2 days are easy: 3 flights of 10 coffees, 30 coffees, scoring 120 cups (4 cup samples per coffee), all before lunch. This way, eating lunch doesn’t throw off your ability to taste, which happens quite often. Lunch is a real gamble; it can have no impact or devastate you. 10 am is really the best cupping time, an hour or two after breakfast.
We finish the 3 flights at about 2 pm, and by that time you badly need a meal in your system, some relief from the slurping, sucking and spitting (sounds appetizing, eh?)
In between flights we discuss each coffees and categorize the scores, people who feel like advocates for a particular lot speak their mind, and those who hate it (the Matadors de Café ) speak their peace. There’s some bread, water, maybe fruit to help keep the stomachs in line, but nothing with strong flavors that will affect the ability to taste.
On the third day we do 45 coffees, 9 per table, 3 flights before lunch and 2 after. I have done 60 coffees in a day, but that is inhumane. Well, to be more specific, you can do 60 or a lot more if you are just cupping for defects. But this type of cupping, with very competitive top lots, where you are not only scoring numbers but describing the cup character to yourself … this is much more ponderous and more difficult. And there is a particularly tragic problem here in Colombia: phenol. Even coffees that scored very well in the first rounds are showing up with a phenolic cup later on. Phenolic taint is said to be caused in the drying of the coffee, and drying is more difficult at higher altitudes where the good coffees are found. So it a way, phenol almost seems to be seeking out the best coffee in the competition and destroying them. You can have 39 cups on the tables and just 1 with phenolic taint. It’s out of the running. Brutal! And you can’t see a phenolic bean in the green or roasted form, it’s a covert killer. You can have 1 phenloic seed in a kilo of coffee and not know it. You’ll brew 200 great cups, and 1 will stink with a hard, almost sulpherous odor and flavor. The rules of this competition are tough, but clear. In the top 10 round, 3 coffees were removed, lots that had been cupped and approved by tens of coffee experts, re-cupped at least 6 times, brewed to make 100 individual cups, and that 1 bad one is enough to toss it out.
The main problem in Colombia is the Broca, the coffee boring insect. They imported a wasp from Africa that attacks the Broca to great effect. The problem wasn’t some kind of environmental contamination with the wasp … no, it was keeping the wasp fed! What were they to do, create Broca to sustain the wasp population? There is a common-sense solution to Broca and everyone is aware of it. Pick the ripe cherry. Broca only thrives in red, ripe coffee cherry, so you keep your trees well picked, as you should anyway, and the Broca population is kept in check. You also need to dispose of any ripe cherry that falls to the ground. The problem is that labor costs are the difficult to meet in a low coffee market, and picking coffee is the majority of cost on a coffee farm.
We discussed the wasp, the broca, the phenol, and other things on our visit to Cenicafe. It is by far the largest coffee research center I have ever seen, truly an amazing facility. The labs are countless, and the specific research they are conducting now I could not say. I saw their gas spectrometry lab. Someone pointed out the room with the new “electronic nose,” a quantifiable aromatic compound detector. But basically the group of international cuppers were kept at a distance from the researchers … sadly. I was waiting to see the trees. I am mildly obsessed with the unusual, non-commercial, rare coffee varietals. I am a bit of a covert seed collector too, since I cultivate my own coffee plants. I was not disappointed and added 8 new cultivars and crosses to my collection (well, if they germinate I did).

Cenicafe; the largest coffee research center and experimental farm in South America ...
This place is ridiculously huge, on a giant swath of land with multiple research sites, a central coffee library and lab center, many warehouses, research processing stations, and experimental farms. We did not get to see but a small part of Cenicafe.

One of many, many research labs at Cenicafe. Too bad our tour wasn't detailed enough and they kept us out of the actual research stations.

To the right, a lab worker using gas spectrometry, uh, I think.

Another lab, another worker.

Juan Carlos (remember, every other person is Juan Carlos) was a coordinator for the FNC and Cup of Excellence. I liked his t-shirt. That's a really good team to be on, the greatest team.

Where to run to in case you turn green.

A lab, a spider, some nuclear research, a mishap. Maybe I could write a comic book out of this stuff. Nah ...

After touring the lab, we visited a small experimental wet mill. These are old style hand pulpers that most little farms in Colombia use.

The new demucilage machine in operation. At this point, I don't find pulpers too exciting ... but I was waiting for the trees, I love the trees, I am crazy about Cultivars!!!

Now, on to the experimental farm. The image to right is a detail photo of the cultivar to the left.

Purpacens is a rare purple-leaf varietal with no great commercial application. I have seen purpacens at the Procafe experimental garden in El Salvador.

This is a cross between the older hybrid Caturra (I believe this originated in the mid 1950s and Purpacens.

Xantocarpa - I can't even tell you want it is, frankly. Never even heard of it.

As you can see the Xantocarpa is a yellow fruiting tree, and an arabica I believe.

Now here's a frankenstein hybrid, Maragogype and Xantocarpa

This tree had few leaves,and in general everything in the garden is at a different stage of development (flowering, fruiting, etc).

This is certainly an ironic name for a cultivar Murta de Hoja Grande means basically "Death of the Big Leaf" and this varietal has really, really small leaves. It reminds me of dwarf citrus leaves, very unusual for coffee.

The leaves are about 1 to 1.5 inches long and very slender.

Another very unusual cross. Polysperma is, if memory serves me right, a cherry that has 6 seeds in each!

The Leaves

German Arabusta; Arabusta is basically a Robusta (cofea canephora) cultivar that has some arabica backcrosses, but really it is still a robusta.

You can tell it is still a Robusta by the clumping of the flowers/fruit, the leaf size and flower size.

French Arabusta cultivar.

Once again, the flowers clump uniformly along the branch hinting at the fact this is a robusta cultivar more than an arabica.

These next 3 "Timor Hybrid" trees, version 7, 8 and 9, are famous (or infamous). These are the actual trees that were used to create the Variedad Colombia cultivar that is resistant to the leaf rust disease, and was spread throughout Colombia.

This too is a Robusta cultivar, in fact, Timor Robusta is the same used in Catimor (Caturra x Timor).

There was a lot of argument on the tour about this. They crossed and backcrossed the Timor and arabicas many, many times. I was arguing that it is still bearing signs of being a Robusta derivative, and they clamed there was no Robusta in the seedstock.

But looking at these Timor trees, they are clearly Robusta. It is true that Colombia Variety was tested for a remarkable number of generations before releasing it, but the fact remains, while it has the chromosome count of an arabica, it does have robusta in it's genome.

Yet one more...

I know a robusta when I see one!

Here's a neat tree that could be a viable commercial plant but you won't see much. It is the aforementioned Colombia Variety in it's yellow form

In general, yellow fruiting arabica trees are more fragile and the cherry is more likely to drop due to wind, etc. But they sure look neat!

And here is the Catuai cultivar of arabica in a yellow variety. You see Yellow Bourbon, and Yellow Caturra, but not Catuai or Colombia in yellow.

Some nice coffee flowers.

Last of all si a really cool cultivar, Liberica. This is not a commercially viable plant, but it is also not a robusta, nor an arabica. It is a separate family. It looks like a massive robusta, or like an Excelsa (not meaning Excelso, Excelsa is a very large tall family of coffee).

The leaves of the Liberica are huge as are the fruiting cherries. And I was able to bring some back to grow in California!

One thing about traveling in coffee areas (and a real misconception); you do not go to a coffee-producing country to get the best cup the region produces. You invariably get the mediocre-to-terrible coffee. Think about it. Coffee is a cash crop, you export the good stuff. Even on a great farm, at least 50% of the crop is sub-par and cannot be exported as Specialty grade coffee. The actual percentage is much lower. The result is around 65% of the coffee from good high-altitude farms and more from the lower-grown farms that is suitable only for bulk exports as generic commercial coffee, or for non-exported coffee. Universally, this is called “internal market” coffee or “for local consumption,” but it always means the same thing: the worst, low-grown, broken beans, broca-eaten, with a handful of twigs and rocks to boot (Several years ago an analysis of coffee sold in rural Brazil was 35% coffee 65% foreign matter: dirt, sticks, rocks!) The coffee sold locally in Brazil is a weak brew called Tinto, and you drink it with lots of sugar. I had some at the flea market in Bogota, made in the traditional urn, the Greca (which are often quite old and beautiful). The coffee is also quite old, but not so beautiful. In Colombia the FNC has launched the Juan Valdez(TM) chain of stores to try to get local markets to consume better coffee. I had about 6 espressos at various Juan Valdez(TM) stores, mainly in the airports, and my advice to them is you need to have someone who actually knows what a good espresso is, or even a passable espresso, before you can serve them. They were uniformly bad, watery, thin, with mediocre flavor. They certainly were not made well, but I don’t think they are using the quality of coffee that they claim to be. My other .02 cents: the Juan Valdez(TM) thing is tired. Make a new start of it. We don’t need caricatures any more.
Actually, I would accept Juan Valdez(TM) if he was reinvented as a crusader against phenol. Frankly, when we posed the question to the director of Cenicafe, he was dismissive. They seem to think phenol is a simple problem … but how come it is turning up in these great coffees that have received the best treatment from their respective farms? Ceniface and the FNC need to take this seriously because it hobbles the push to redefine Colombian coffee, to leave behind the antiquated notion of Excelso and Supremo grades, and move to micro-regional and Estate grade coffees. There is admittedly a lot of expectation placed on Colombian coffee, and in the cupping too. I wanted to see what the truly best coffees available were. I was not disappointed at all, but I did learn to change my expectations.

Firstly, Colombia has 2 crops, and this cupping was mostly Huila coffees, ones from the north (Sierra and Bucaramanga), some Cauca coffees, but it did not include Southern coffees like Narino. There will be a second competition in August to focus on these regions. Secondly, we found out that the FNC did not give farmers time to adequately prepare for the competition. Farmers found out in mid December, so the pool of entrants was smaller than expected (a bit over 200 farms). Finally, phenolic (and to some degree ferment) needs to be eradicated. It’s up to Cenicafe to train farmers of the causes, and to consult them on changes to drying techniques, equipment and milling operations. Cenicafe is there to serve the farmers. They need to help the farms, not blame them. On a positive note, I have never seen a competition more expertly run, more technically perfect, than this one. The support workers, some 20 women who pour the coffee at the perfect temperature, at the exact same time on all tables, were fantastic. The roasting, done on a Probatino roaster, was nearly flawless … the best competition roasting I have ever seen. And despite the white-collar prison feel, the “compound” was a very nice place to be. After all, being sequestered among butterflies, orchids, and coffee can’t be all that bad. Next time, I will bring the Ancla, the Santander chocolate, and some fresh yucca arepas from Bogota. That is, if the FNC doesn’t send a hit man to Emeryville for my anti-Juan Valdez(TM) remarks. In truth, everyone who spends the time to praise or critique these great coffees, and the Colombian tradition, cares enough about it to make the effort, to want a change of direction, and to see it succeed. I believe in the future of micro-regional Colombian coffees. I get excited about them, I buy them, I praise them, I love them, I would marry them if I could (and I don’t want to get whacked by the FNC).

Livestock with attitude ...

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there was a small fenced field with 3 Alpaca and 4 sheep.

I know that the Llama and to a lesser degree Alpaca are infamous for their bad attitudes, so I was on my toes as I parted the electric fence to go in. I had to do it, I had to get the pictures...

The Alpaca were interested mainly in any possible food I had to offer, but the sheep stayed away ...

until one real testy fellow came forward as I approached his "flock". Just look at this guy ... you can tell he means trouble.

What followed was some very bizarre sheep behavior; at first he tried to block me from the others with his body, and then he rushed me, going for the full-on headbutt

At this point, the workers in the area had taken notice and were getting some morning entertainment from the crazy gringo that went into the pen with the fearsome sheep. I wouldn't back down though, and despite a few head buts, got the pictures I wanted!

Chart of winning coffee lots from the 2005 CoE Colombia

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...you are on the last leg of the trip! (back to page 1, back to page 2)
You might think tasting coffee at a nature retreat in a verdant countryside setting, amid butterfly gardens, orchid blooms and pine forests is ideal. An inspirational environment, serene beauty, dewy mornings, fine coffee. So why does this place feel like a white collar prison? Well, let’s see … when you drive in you pass through 2 separate manned security stations. That’s sorta prison-like. In the evenings there is a black-booted kid with a machine gun in the lobby. The food is of that universally non-specific “institutional” variety. It reeks of quantity, belonging to the “Food for 50+” family of cuisine. And there’s this sense in the evening that you are just trying to kill time, playing cards, chatting, until you are tired enough to sleep. It’s a place called Recinto de Pensamiento (Retreat for Thinking?), and ecological outpost, an orchid path, interpretive trails, a pasture with sheep and alpaca, a micro coffee farm of about 200 trees. Surprisingly, the high fences are only in the front. It backs up to a hillside and there’s only cattle fencing there. You can pick up the caritera and hike up until it ends in myriad footpaths, eventually opening up into hilltop cattle pasture. Thank god this Thinking Box is just 3 sided.
Roaming the Pensamiento each morning (with camera) ... In case you wonder why people would travel in Colombia, given the dangers (real or imagined) this should address the question; it is BEAUTIFUL!












I wake up early to walk each morning. Cupping starts at 8:30 Colombian time, which is 5:30 Emeryville time. Somehow I have adjusted though. The first 2 days are easy: 3 flights of 10 coffees, 30 coffees, scoring 120 cups (4 cup samples per coffee), all before lunch. This way, eating lunch doesn’t throw off your ability to taste, which happens quite often. Lunch is a real gamble; it can have no impact or devastate you. 10 am is really the best cupping time, an hour or two after breakfast. We finish the 3 flights at about 2 pm, and by that time you badly need a meal in your system, some relief from the slurping, sucking and spitting (sounds appetizing, eh?) In between flights we discuss each coffees and categorize the scores, people who feel like advocates for a particular lot speak their mind, and those who hate it (the Matadors de Café ) speak their peace. There’s some bread, water, maybe fruit to help keep the stomachs in line, but nothing with strong flavors that will affect the ability to taste. On the third day we do 45 coffees, 9 per table, 3 flights before lunch and 2 after. I have done 60 coffees in a day, but that is inhumane. Well, to be more specific, you can do 60 or a lot more if you are just cupping for defects. But this type of cupping, with very competitive top lots, where you are not only scoring numbers but describing the cup character to yourself … this is much more ponderous and more difficult. And there is a particularly tragic problem here in Colombia: phenol. Even coffees that scored very well in the first rounds are showing up with a phenolic cup later on. Phenolic taint is said to be caused in the drying of the coffee, and drying is more difficult at higher altitudes where the good coffees are found. So it a way, phenol almost seems to be seeking out the best coffee in the competition and destroying them. You can have 39 cups on the tables and just 1 with phenolic taint. It’s out of the running. Brutal! And you can’t see a phenolic bean in the green or roasted form, it’s a covert killer. You can have 1 phenloic seed in a kilo of coffee and not know it. You’ll brew 200 great cups, and 1 will stink with a hard, almost sulpherous odor and flavor. The rules of this competition are tough, but clear. In the top 10 round, 3 coffees were removed, lots that had been cupped and approved by tens of coffee experts, re-cupped at least 6 times, brewed to make 100 individual cups, and that 1 bad one is enough to toss it out. The main problem in Colombia is the Broca, the coffee boring insect. They imported a wasp from Africa that attacks the Broca to great effect. The problem wasn’t some kind of environmental contamination with the wasp … no, it was keeping the wasp fed! What were they to do, create Broca to sustain the wasp population? There is a common-sense solution to Broca and everyone is aware of it. Pick the ripe cherry. Broca only thrives in red, ripe coffee cherry, so you keep your trees well picked, as you should anyway, and the Broca population is kept in check. You also need to dispose of any ripe cherry that falls to the ground. The problem is that labor costs are the difficult to meet in a low coffee market, and picking coffee is the majority of cost on a coffee farm. We discussed the wasp, the broca, the phenol, and other things on our visit to Cenicafe. It is by far the largest coffee research center I have ever seen, truly an amazing facility. The labs are countless, and the specific research they are conducting now I could not say. I saw their gas spectrometry lab. Someone pointed out the room with the new “electronic nose,” a quantifiable aromatic compound detector. But basically the group of international cuppers were kept at a distance from the researchers … sadly. I was waiting to see the trees. I am mildly obsessed with the unusual, non-commercial, rare coffee varietals. I am a bit of a covert seed collector too, since I cultivate my own coffee plants. I was not disappointed and added 8 new cultivars and crosses to my collection (well, if they germinate I did).
Cenicafe; the largest coffee research center and experimental farm in South America ... This place is ridiculously huge, on a giant swath of land with multiple research sites, a central coffee library and lab center, many warehouses, research processing stations, and experimental farms. We did not get to see but a small part of Cenicafe.
One of many, many research labs at Cenicafe. Too bad our tour wasn't detailed enough and they kept us out of the actual research stations. To the right, a lab worker using gas spectrometry, uh, I think.
Another lab, another worker.	Juan Carlos (remember, every other person is Juan Carlos) was a coordinator for the FNC and Cup of Excellence. I liked his t-shirt. That's a really good team to be on, the greatest team.
Where to run to in case you turn green.	A lab, a spider, some nuclear research, a mishap. Maybe I could write a comic book out of this stuff. Nah ...
After touring the lab, we visited a small experimental wet mill. These are old style hand pulpers that most little farms in Colombia use.	The new demucilage machine in operation. At this point, I don't find pulpers too exciting ... but I was waiting for the trees, I love the trees, I am crazy about Cultivars!!!
Now, on to the experimental farm. The image to right is a detail photo of the cultivar to the left.
Purpacens is a rare purple-leaf varietal with no great commercial application. I have seen purpacens at the Procafe experimental garden in El Salvador.	This is a cross between the older hybrid Caturra (I believe this originated in the mid 1950s and Purpacens.
Xantocarpa - I can't even tell you want it is, frankly. Never even heard of it.	As you can see the Xantocarpa is a yellow fruiting tree, and an arabica I believe.
Now here's a frankenstein hybrid, Maragogype and Xantocarpa	This tree had few leaves,and in general everything in the garden is at a different stage of development (flowering, fruiting, etc).
This is certainly an ironic name for a cultivar Murta de Hoja Grande means basically "Death of the Big Leaf" and this varietal has really, really small leaves. It reminds me of dwarf citrus leaves, very unusual for coffee.	The leaves are about 1 to 1.5 inches long and very slender.
Another very unusual cross. Polysperma is, if memory serves me right, a cherry that has 6 seeds in each!	The Leaves
German Arabusta; Arabusta is basically a Robusta (cofea canephora) cultivar that has some arabica backcrosses, but really it is still a robusta.	You can tell it is still a Robusta by the clumping of the flowers/fruit, the leaf size and flower size.
French Arabusta cultivar.	Once again, the flowers clump uniformly along the branch hinting at the fact this is a robusta cultivar more than an arabica.
These next 3 "Timor Hybrid" trees, version 7, 8 and 9, are famous (or infamous). These are the actual trees that were used to create the Variedad Colombia cultivar that is resistant to the leaf rust disease, and was spread throughout Colombia.	This too is a Robusta cultivar, in fact, Timor Robusta is the same used in Catimor (Caturra x Timor).
There was a lot of argument on the tour about this. They crossed and backcrossed the Timor and arabicas many, many times. I was arguing that it is still bearing signs of being a Robusta derivative, and they clamed there was no Robusta in the seedstock.	But looking at these Timor trees, they are clearly Robusta. It is true that Colombia Variety was tested for a remarkable number of generations before releasing it, but the fact remains, while it has the chromosome count of an arabica, it does have robusta in it's genome.
Yet one more...	I know a robusta when I see one!
Here's a neat tree that could be a viable commercial plant but you won't see much. It is the aforementioned Colombia Variety in it's yellow form	In general, yellow fruiting arabica trees are more fragile and the cherry is more likely to drop due to wind, etc. But they sure look neat!
And here is the Catuai cultivar of arabica in a yellow variety. You see Yellow Bourbon, and Yellow Caturra, but not Catuai or Colombia in yellow.	Some nice coffee flowers.
Last of all si a really cool cultivar, Liberica. This is not a commercially viable plant, but it is also not a robusta, nor an arabica. It is a separate family. It looks like a massive robusta, or like an Excelsa (not meaning Excelso, Excelsa is a very large tall family of coffee).	The leaves of the Liberica are huge as are the fruiting cherries. And I was able to bring some back to grow in California!

One thing about traveling in coffee areas (and a real misconception); you do not go to a coffee-producing country to get the best cup the region produces. You invariably get the mediocre-to-terrible coffee. Think about it. Coffee is a cash crop, you export the good stuff. Even on a great farm, at least 50% of the crop is sub-par and cannot be exported as Specialty grade coffee. The actual percentage is much lower. The result is around 65% of the coffee from good high-altitude farms and more from the lower-grown farms that is suitable only for bulk exports as generic commercial coffee, or for non-exported coffee. Universally, this is called “internal market” coffee or “for local consumption,” but it always means the same thing: the worst, low-grown, broken beans, broca-eaten, with a handful of twigs and rocks to boot (Several years ago an analysis of coffee sold in rural Brazil was 35% coffee 65% foreign matter: dirt, sticks, rocks!) The coffee sold locally in Brazil is a weak brew called Tinto, and you drink it with lots of sugar. I had some at the flea market in Bogota, made in the traditional urn, the Greca (which are often quite old and beautiful). The coffee is also quite old, but not so beautiful. In Colombia the FNC has launched the Juan Valdez(TM) chain of stores to try to get local markets to consume better coffee. I had about 6 espressos at various Juan Valdez(TM) stores, mainly in the airports, and my advice to them is you need to have someone who actually knows what a good espresso is, or even a passable espresso, before you can serve them. They were uniformly bad, watery, thin, with mediocre flavor. They certainly were not made well, but I don’t think they are using the quality of coffee that they claim to be. My other .02 cents: the Juan Valdez(TM) thing is tired. Make a new start of it. We don’t need caricatures any more. Actually, I would accept Juan Valdez(TM) if he was reinvented as a crusader against phenol. Frankly, when we posed the question to the director of Cenicafe, he was dismissive. They seem to think phenol is a simple problem … but how come it is turning up in these great coffees that have received the best treatment from their respective farms? Ceniface and the FNC need to take this seriously because it hobbles the push to redefine Colombian coffee, to leave behind the antiquated notion of Excelso and Supremo grades, and move to micro-regional and Estate grade coffees. There is admittedly a lot of expectation placed on Colombian coffee, and in the cupping too. I wanted to see what the truly best coffees available were. I was not disappointed at all, but I did learn to change my expectations. Firstly, Colombia has 2 crops, and this cupping was mostly Huila coffees, ones from the north (Sierra and Bucaramanga), some Cauca coffees, but it did not include Southern coffees like Narino. There will be a second competition in August to focus on these regions. Secondly, we found out that the FNC did not give farmers time to adequately prepare for the competition. Farmers found out in mid December, so the pool of entrants was smaller than expected (a bit over 200 farms). Finally, phenolic (and to some degree ferment) needs to be eradicated. It’s up to Cenicafe to train farmers of the causes, and to consult them on changes to drying techniques, equipment and milling operations. Cenicafe is there to serve the farmers. They need to help the farms, not blame them. On a positive note, I have never seen a competition more expertly run, more technically perfect, than this one. The support workers, some 20 women who pour the coffee at the perfect temperature, at the exact same time on all tables, were fantastic. The roasting, done on a Probatino roaster, was nearly flawless … the best competition roasting I have ever seen. And despite the white-collar prison feel, the “compound” was a very nice place to be. After all, being sequestered among butterflies, orchids, and coffee can’t be all that bad. Next time, I will bring the Ancla, the Santander chocolate, and some fresh yucca arepas from Bogota. That is, if the FNC doesn’t send a hit man to Emeryville for my anti-Juan Valdez(TM) remarks. In truth, everyone who spends the time to praise or critique these great coffees, and the Colombian tradition, cares enough about it to make the effort, to want a change of direction, and to see it succeed. I believe in the future of micro-regional Colombian coffees. I get excited about them, I buy them, I praise them, I love them, I would marry them if I could (and I don’t want to get whacked by the FNC).
Livestock with attitude ...
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there was a small fenced field with 3 Alpaca and 4 sheep.	I know that the Llama and to a lesser degree Alpaca are infamous for their bad attitudes, so I was on my toes as I parted the electric fence to go in. I had to do it, I had to get the pictures...
The Alpaca were interested mainly in any possible food I had to offer, but the sheep stayed away ...	until one real testy fellow came forward as I approached his "flock". Just look at this guy ... you can tell he means trouble.
What followed was some very bizarre sheep behavior; at first he tried to block me from the others with his body, and then he rushed me, going for the full-on headbutt	At this point, the workers in the area had taken notice and were getting some morning entertainment from the crazy gringo that went into the pen with the fearsome sheep. I wouldn't back down though, and despite a few head buts, got the pictures I wanted!