Greeting visitors warmly with a wide smile and a friendly pat on the back, Francisco Morales is happy to talk about the coffees he's spent a lifetime cultivating.
Francisco began his career in coffee at age 15, when he started selecting coffee seeds and started planting in his nursery for his first small lot next to the main road. He's faced many challenges over the years, but has grown his lot sizes and increased quality over time. In the year 2000 for example, prices dropped drastically. He bought neighboring land to increase production, and over the years has been able to provide for his family. He has 7 daughters and 20 grandchildren, a few of whom provide support around the farm.
Located in El Coyegual, La Esperanza is an incredible farm. The coffee plants are lush and full, separated into well-manicured lots under a canopy of shade trees. Don Francisco's family's home sits across the valley from his farm, the drying patios offering a beautiful view of the entire estate.
El Cauca Colombia
Colombian coffee is among the most recognizable and most dynamic in the world, with multiple growing regions whose distinct yet consistently crowd-pleasing profiles reflect the various microclimates that exist in this large country. We source workhorse coffees from various of these growing regions, looking for a cup that contains a nice balance of sweetness, fruity effervescence, and a foundation of cocoa and/or toffee. Most Gran Galope offerings are a blend of coffees from between 10 and 30 smallholder farms, each with comparable cup characteristics and scores. Coffees from Huila are cupped and purchased in Pitalito; coffees from Cauca are cupped and purchased in Popayán, and coffees from Nariño are cupped and purchased in both Pasto and La Unión.
Founded in 1927, the Federación Nacional de Cafeteros de Colombia is a large NGO that provides a wide variety of services and support to the country’s coffee producers, regardless of the size of their landholdings or the volume of their production. The marketing arm of the FNC develops campaigns to push not only international consumption of Colombian coffee but also, more recently, domestic consumption of specifically specialty-grade Colombian coffees.
The FNC also guarantees a purchase price for any coffee grown within Colombia, which provides some degree of financial security to farmers: They have the option to find private buyers or break into specialty markets, or they can tender their coffee to the FNC and receive a somewhat stable (if also rather standard, influenced by the global commodities market) price at any point during the year. This is designed to eliminate some of the market pressures and provide reliable income to the coffee sector, though it also comes under criticism for disincentivizing the development of super-specialty lots and micro-lots.
The scientific arm of the organization, Cenicafé, is devoted to research, development, dissemination, and support throughout the country. A wide-ranging extension service employing more than 1,500 field workers is deployed to meet and consult with farmers on soil management, processing techniques, variety selection, disease prevention and treatment, and other agricultural aspects of coffee farming.
We have had boots on the ground (and spoons in the cup) here since our earliest days, and we fall in love over and over again with the regional variations, the varieties, the landscape, and the producers themselves. From our celebration of the taste of place with Regional Selects from Cauca to the discovery and development of micro-lots from all over the country with our export partners and the producers with whom they work closely—we simply can’t get enough.