Meet the farmer: Nelson Melo is coming to Milwaukee
There are some exciting things brewing for the month of February…
On Thursday, February 19th Alterra will be hosting a visit from Colombian coffee farmer Nelson Melo of Finca Las Acacias in Popayan, Colombia. Nelson’s coffee will be featured in the cafes that week as an Alterra-exclusive special...we bought his entire crop this year - that’s how good this coffee is! (Read below for the rest of the Nelson/Alterra story.)
Join us at Alterra Prospect (2211 N. Prospect Ave.) on Feb. 19th at 5:00pm for a tasting of Nelson’s most recent harvest, a brief presentation and reception welcoming him to Milwaukee. Presses will be flowing, photos of Nelson’s farm will be playing, and our baristas will be pulling shots and serving up signature drinks in preparation for competition at the Great Lakes Regional Barista Competition in Chicago Feb 20-22. At 6:30pm, we plan to show clips of the Discovery Channel show ”How Stuff Works - Coffee,” featuring Alterra Humboldt and a visit to Finca Las Acacias. Mr. Melo will then discuss his coffee and his certified organic farm in Popayan with a Q & A session to follow.
This is going to be a great event and a fantastic opportunity to learn about the people and processes behind the coffees we purchase, roast and serve. Alterra Baking Company catering and drinks will be available at the reception. Don’t miss it!
The whole story:
All of the Colombian coffee we buy comes from small-scale producers in the departments of Huila and Cauca who farm (and live) on the land they own. As opposed to larger estates that employ seasonal “pickers” to harvest and sometimes process the coffee, these farmers and their families do it all by hand and the money they earn from the coffee harvest is their primary source of income. Since many of these farmers are isolated from the larger cities and spent most of their time out on the countryside where they live, they are often limited to selling their coffee at low prices to opportunistic middlemen known in the coffee industry as coyotes (the bad guys). And to make matters worse, the coffees that they are selling to the coyotes are sometimes some of the best tasting coffees in Colombia and are just randomly blended with everything else that arrives at the mill on the same day, usually low quality commodity coffee.
Over the past 4 years, we have been working with Virmax, a very progressive exporter in Colombia that has cultivated relationships with some of the small-scale farmers in high-altitude regions in Cauca and Huila that have the best potential to produce high-quality coffee. Each time a farmer delivers his/her coffee, our exporter tags the bags with a code and stores the coffee in their warehouse until we get a chance to taste it. This requires a tremendous amount of work, as each of the 2000+ deliveries per year may be as small as 70 kg, or one full burlap bag. Then, a sample from each accepted delivery is sent to our cupping lab here in Milwaukee and we taste and score it on several flavor/body categories and decide if we are going to accept or reject the lot. Over the course of the harvest, we will literally taste hundreds of samples until we accept enough to meet our demands for the year. This year, Alterra will buy three 250 bag shipping containers of El Castillo, or 750 bags. Each container represents a blend of the best individual lots from 50-80 producers in these regions. The best part is that the farmers, who are used to selling their coffee to middlemen and earning well below commodity pricing and are now being recognized for producing great coffee and earning well, well above commodity prices.
Of course, when you taste hundreds of samples you are bound to find a few that are so remarkable you want to keep them separate from the larger blend. Farmer Nelson Melo’s coffee was one of samples that really grabbed us. The first time we tasted his coffee from Finca Las Acacias in Cauca near Popayan it became an instant favorite and we have purchased it every year since. In fact, his organic coffee was so good this year that we decided to purchase the entire crop and offer it as an Alterra-exclusive. We can’t say enough about the quality of this coffee - citrus and jasmine aromas are followed by flavors suggesting malbec and melon. Piquant, lime rind tartness melds with candied-cherry sweetness and incredibly soft, supportive body. This will be the only time we can offer his coffee until we try next year’s harvest so this is definitely something you won’t want to miss.