Travel Damn fine
The best cup of coffee in the world can be found in Colombia’s Zona Cafetera Paul Gallant
About a dozen cars ahead on the narrow road, there’s a truck with a smashed- in front- end sitting a few feet from a cow t hat’s breathed its last breath. Which means it’s time for another break from touring around Colombia’s Zona Cafetera, perhaps the world’s most famous coffeegrowing region. Like the motorists on both sides of the accident, we get out of the car and watch as the smashed vehicle and unfortunate bovine are cleared from the road, all to the soundtrack of Shakira’s latest inescapable hit, which pours out of car windows and echoes off the hills of Rio Santo Domingo.
Don’t ask me which valley we’re in. But what makes the roads here tricky to navigate is also what makes the coffee so unique. Ascending and descending accounts for as much mileage as the distance measured as the crow flies. On any given drive, the micro-climate changes every 10 minutes or so, from dry to rainy, from warm enough for growing banana to cool enough for dairy pastures. And everywhere there’s coffee, its flavour depending on factors that seem to me unmeasurable, but which coffee connoisseurs memorize like the details of vintage wine. Scattered across the re- gion are fincas, local ranches which might be anything from a small shop on the front lot of a farm to a sizeable multi- experience operation with tours and accommodations. They compete on coffee specs like attitude, temperature, shade, exposure to rain and bean variety as much as they do with service and décor.
I’ve been to other coffeegrowing countries before, but have never seen such a local appetite for the stuff. Why should I be surprised? Most of t he 2.1 million 60- kilogram bags of coffee that Colombia produces each month come from here. You might as well celebrate the product that defines you.
The café at Finca El Mirador hangs off the side of a mountainside about four kilometres outside the town of Filandia, and provides a fairy-tale view of manicured hills of pastureland and coffee farms. I’ve driven here with my friend, a Colombia-Canadian who grew up in the area and knows his way around. We’re too high for bananas, which are easy to spot since they’re usually wrapped in blue plastic bags that protect them from pests, but there are a few palm trees jutting out of the landscape like telephone poles. ( The trees, among the world’s tallest palms, don’t grow easily and are in de- cline, a local rancher tells us, because local cattle keep eating the seeds.) Today’s featured coffee was grown at 1,800- metres above sea level, an exceptionally high altitude – basically as high as coffee can be grown – making for a richer, spicier drink than the beans grown closer to the minimum altitude, which is about 800 metres. Our hostess has the equipment to prepare it Colombian- style colador traditional, poured through a cheesecloth, or with an espresso pot or Japanese siphon. But without asking us, she decides she’ll make our afternoon refreshment using a French press. She al- so decides we need to know how to use one, walking us through all the steps before finally pouring our drinks. It’s worth the wait. I’m not expert, but there are notes in each sip I’ve never tasted in coffee before. It’s brighter, more textured drink than any cup I’ve ever had.
Nearby Filandia is just one of the super cute towns and small cities scattered here and there across the Zona Cafetera, which spans three departmentos, the Colombia equivalent of provinces. The town’s Calle del Tiempo Detinido ( Street Where Time Stands Still) is lined with brashly coloured buildings – purple trimmed with green, dark blue clash- ing with soft pink – that contain restaurants, bars and shops, but also law offices, medical clinics and coffeegrowing supply stores catering to caficultores. At Casa de Las Orquídeas, a caférestaurant whose walls are lined with potted orchids, the beans are sources from La Natucha Finca, less than five kilometres away, where the plants share the land with avocados, guavas and oranges. Short of plucking a vegetable out of a field yourself, food provenance has never been spelled out more clearly.
We had already visited Salento, a coffee connoisseur’s haven whose popula-
MIGHT AS WELL CELEBRATE THE PRODUCT THAT DEFINES YOU. THERE ARE NOTES IN EACH SIP I’VE NEVER TASTED BEFORE.
tion is about 7,300. That’s half of Filandia’s, but Salento probably had more coffee shops and gift shops than a visitor could check out during a stay of several days. At Café Jesús Martín, which c at ers to i nternational visitors looking for the best of the best, I drop about $ 20 on 250 grams of coffee grown at an altitude of almost 1,900 metres.
I know this because the information is on the bag, as well as the name of the valley it came from, its producer and the date it was picked. I had never spent so much on coffee beans before, but I had had so much coffee that day, I was feeling a little lightheaded.
The beans turned out to produce such a delicious drink, I only make it for people who have done me extraordinary favours.
Salento’s popularity is partly due to its proximity to the Valle de Cocora, a breathtaking mountain landscape known for its tall palm trees, waterfalls, hiking and horseback riding. The valley is pristinely green, but to call it untouched nature would be inaccurate. The geographic contours, though a designated protected area, have been shaped by agriculture, cattle grazing and tourism. In daylight hours, a parade of jeeps with European backpackers hanging off the sides go up and down the main road, delivering visitors to various adventures.
My friend dithers about whether to take me to Pijao. It’s pretty small and not so much visited. But after the winding hour- l ong drive from the department capital of Armenia, I marvel at the town’s Brigadoon- level remoteness, wedged into a narrow valley that seems to keep everything moist all the time.
Strolling around the few blocks of its downtown, it was hard not to notice the same truck slowly merry-go-rounding the main square, t he driver and pas- senger cheerfully chatting with various pedestrians as they themselves meandered through the square slowly enough to be inviting conversation. Famed novelist Gabriel García Márquez wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude about a town on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, but Pijao also seems to be located in its own quirky, foggy, Magic Realism universe.
It was also hard not to notice that, though we were the only tourists there, there were more than a half dozen places selling coffee. We stopped at the lo- cal billiard hall – as essential to a main square of a Colombian small town as a statue of El Liberator Simone Bolivar – for another jolt of caffeine. It was a simple place, with newspapers strewn over the unused pool tables. Yet even here, there was a choice of preparation methods, colador traditional, French press or Japanese syphon. But way up here, rather than costing close to $3 a cup, like on the tourist trail, we laid down 75 cents apiece. The proprietor rang it up on an antique cash register.
Although not quite as mind- blowing as the fancy coffee I had bought in Salento, the billiard hall’s brew was better than most of what I have tasted in Canada. The gentleman who served us couldn’t tell us exactly what valley it had come from, but I was confident the beans hadn’t come far.