MEDELLíN’S CAFES AND FARMS ARE TAKING BACK COLOMBIAN COFFEE
“En casa del herrero, azadón de palo.” In the blacksmith’s house, a wooden hoe.
This popular saying in Colombia (which mirrors sayings elsewhere like “the shoemaker’s child always goes barefoot”) references the way specialists often forget to share their gifts with their own communities. In Medellín, the capital of Colombia’s northwestern Antioquia region, it’s not blacksmiths but coffee growers and cafe owners who have ignored their neighbors. Though the country is known around the world for its smooth coffee, producers have long exported the best beans to foreign markets. The cheap coffee that remained for domestic consumption never reflected the area’s excellent reputation.
For generations, locals accepted this fate and stuck to basic filter coffee, often called tinto (red), likely referring to the reddish color of brewed Colombian coffee. But in less than a decade, a handful of entrepreneurs have given the city a cafe culture to match its famed farming practices, pushing the city into the world of third-wave cafes and contemporary brewing methods. Today, groups of young people can be seen enjoying pour overs, iced coffees, and cappuccinos in modern spaces lined with concrete and lush greenery.
Though they may look like cafes around the world, these businesses distinguish Medellín as one of the few cities where high-quality coffee is grown, harvested, roasted, and consumed. They’ve also helped reshape dynamics around the supply chain and the economic significance of Colombian coffee.
Coffee literally fills the slopes of Medellín’s hills. After the Jesuits brought the plant to Colombia in the 18th century, the industry became fundamental to the economic development of the Antioquia department, especially in the 20th century. Today, 114,000 hectares of Antioquia are planted with coffee, spread across more than 95,000 farms and tended to by over 76,000 coffee growers, according to La Federación Nacional de Cafeteros.
For much of Medellín’s coffee-growing history, plantation workers would typically roast beans in a pan, grind them, boil the coffee in an olleta (a traditional metal pot), sweeten it with panela, and strain it through a mesh cloth. You’ll still find ground filter coffee sweetened with panela at corner street stalls, offices, cafes, and corrientazos (restaurants that offer affordable meals or daily specials), where it’s usually served complimentary after a meal. At home, most people just use a filter machine out of convenience.
“We came to change [that] mindset,” says Nicolás Echavarría, one of the founders of Pergamino Café.
The Echavarría family runs several coffee farms outside the city and works with farmers across Colombia. For decades, their primary business was exporting beans, but in 2012 they turned their attention to the local market with a cafe on Medellín’s Primavera Street. The family eventually expanded to eight locations across the city, training locals to become baristas. About 60 percent of their business still comes from exports, but they’re hoping to get to a 50-50 split with domestic sales.
“It’s about teaching customers to appreciate the different varieties of beans and preparation methods,” Nicolás says. The cafes have also redefined and expanded the audience for coffee; while the beverage was once associated with the working world of adults, Pergamino has managed to attract younger customers with items like cold brew and frappes.
The Echavarrías are especially focused on paying their producers well, partnering with groups like the Women’s Agricultural Association of the Cauca Department to offer fair rates (as well as training and knowledge about organic farming).
“Our goal is to put most of the money in the hands of coffee farmers,” says Pedro Miguel Echavarría, Nicolás’s brother. “As a family-owned company, we have to ensure the long-term sustainability of our business. If we do not ensure that our producers have a high and sustainable income, we will not have producers in the years to come.”
He points out that the average Colombian coffee farmer is getting older, and there’s little generational turnover. In a market that could shrink, higher pay could guarantee supply for the brand and its cafes, especially specialty beans from high-altitude areas.
Global coffee brands like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts tout their ethical sourcing programs and social and ecological responsibility to coffee-growing communities, but international companies rarely have the same impact as a local operation.
“What actually reaches the [farmer] in terms of income is really very little,” Pedro Miguel says of these international programs. “A small and local company is more concerned with the immediate reality of the communities they work with, improving productivity and therefore life quality.”
Coffee’s role as a tool for social and economic change is especially powerful in a city like Medellín, where residents were directly affected by cocaine drug cartels in the ’80s and ’90s, deep economic inequality, and paramilitary violence in the surrounding countryside, which displaced many coffee farmers.
The coffee industry, the city, and this past are intertwined in the La Sierra neighborhood, for instance, an area formerly dominated by paramilitary groups that now counts people displaced by violence among its residents. When a sample of coffee from a farm there reached Cristian Raigosa, he was surprised by the quality, so he partnered with Joan Molina to found Rituales, a coffee roastery that works with 35 families from La Sierra.
“We highlight La Sierra because we were impressed by many things,” Raigosa says. “The fact that coffee is produced in the city. The quality of the coffee. And above all, the social conditions of the coffee farmers, who live in extreme poverty so close to the city. Their situation is more vulnerable than coffee farmers from much more distant areas.”
Along with a facility in the city where Raigosa and Molina go deep on fermentation and roasting, Rituales has a shop in the Laureles neighborhood, an area slowly becoming more gentrified — now known for tree-lined streets, fruit carts, cultural venues, and restaurants. The differences between La Sierra and Laureles are striking, but Rituales ties the neighborhoods together.
Then there’s Urbania, another coffee shop founded in 2016 by young entrepreneurs linking business to social and environmental causes. Along with farmers across the country, the cafe works directly with producers, victims of conflict, and ex-combatants in Antioquia. Along with earning B Corp Certification, the practices have allowed the company to expand to eight branches around Medellín.
“We felt that by doing these kinds of alliances, we were contributing to the peacebuilding mechanism of the country,” says co-owner Julián Gamboa. It’s paid off. The cafe’s Paz (Peace) line of coffees is a best seller.
“We saw that the model could be replicated for environmental impact projects,” Gamboa continues. “We started working with conservation NGOs that had contact with coffee growers, and now we are part of several efforts to help preserve forests, jaguars, and bears.”
Gamboa clarifies that none of this would be possible without a change in attitude among Medellin’s customers, as people start to appreciate their own specialty coffee.
“They are willing to pay more for better quality, and I think a new consumption culture has been created,” he says. He’s excited about the industry’s growth and points to the dozens of cafes sprouting up around Medellín. Some shops are even thinking about expanding to Bogotá.
And while V60 and Chemex pour overs are popular at the city’s newest establishments, there’s still room on the cafe table for a classic tinto — except maybe made with the best of Medellín’s coffee beans.
Liliana López Sorzano is a food and travel writer based between Mexico City and Bogotá, Colombia, where she contributes to local and international media. She is the former editor-in-chief of Food & Wine en Español.