The best coffee in the world - in Cali!

The Best Coffee in the World - Gesha Cerro Azul - Cafe Granja La Esperanza

I say that ironically - I am skeptical of rankings, or that something would be considered the best of the world. 

But it turns out that there are a few different highly regarded international competitions, most visibly the Specialty Coffee Association of America.  And there is a coffee that has been winning a lot. Gesha Cerrro Azul.  ( SCAA winner 2012 2013 2014)   Gesha is a varietal from Ethiopia, introduced to Panama, and now grown with incredible care and dedication just outside of Cali.  And it turns out the warehouse and business office is in Cali, so I dropped them an email full of adulation and pleading, and they had me over for a cup of coffee.  So there I was, Tuesday morning, sampling the best cup of coffee in the world.  Muchisimas Gracias al Sr Felipe Paz!!!

One interesting angle to the story is an Oakland connection. I have been following the Instagram of Steven Vick, the green bean buyer world traveler and interesting person extraordinaire, for Blue Bottle Coffee. Much of my education on great coffee had been through Blue Bottle, at least 10 years ago at the Berkeley Farmers Market. Steven Vick had just been in Cali, and that was one thing that led me to contact the growers myself.  So the loop into my story is that right when I got there and met Felipe Paz, he pulled out a sachet of Blue Bottle roasted coffee, that had just won an award, and grinded it and prepared a Chemex.  So there I was sipping a coffee grown 2 hours from my house in Cali, and roasted in Oakland California a couple of weeks ago.   And futhermore, contemplate that the entire supply of this coffee is exported as green beans ( as is the majority of Colombian coffee) ,  so it is not available for purchase within Colombia!  

Thats $10 for 50grams of coffee, if you are lucky enough to find it

I learned a lot in a brief visit, how much extra they do to take care of the plants, ( 95 steps instead of a normal 16 steps)  how much care is taken in processing and post-processing, and a little bit about the super rarified high end trade.  Lots of fascinating parallels to wine in the terroir, the optimal stressing of the plant, the fragility of the sugars and when and how to harvest and select, etc.  

One super interesting thing I learned was about that the coffee in green form ( the way it is exported and the way I buy it at home) it is still a living seed.  A lot of the care of coffee is to dry it and keep it cool and conditioned, but keeping the living organism of the seed alive is a key to how long it will be storable.  

There is also a cool angle about how it is exported, all of the coffee is sold through a single exporter, Sustainable Harvest, but who is very open about connecting the roasters and the growers - an “open relationship model”  One other fascinating thing is that all these different awards at competitions are due to being roasted by all different roasters in the US ( who are competing with each other)  Imagine a wine competition where winemakers started with the same grapes and competed to beat each other with their own wines.  

One thing that is amazing to me is that the famous area for coffee the “Eje Cafetero” is North of Cali and towards Medellin. The new highly sought after places are several hours south, in Huila and Nariño.  But this amazing coffee is grown in nearby Valle de Cauca, only a couple of hours from Cali.  I have asked to visit the farm itself, but if not we will at least go and drive around in the area with some of our next visitors. 

And finally there is a terrible lack of good coffee in Cali, Colombia.  That is another long post, but sadly the gourmet coffee culture has yet to arrive here.  So it made getting to taste the best coffee in the world, in a warehouse in weird neighborhood.  ( the Taxi driver thought I was crazy - leading him around Barrio Industrial with my iphone)