Colombia Pescador is one of our favourite coffees to source. It truly shines as a single origin and is an integral component of our most popular coffee blends.
This is a coffee that we have been buying since 2011 through our partners Racafe (whom we have worked with since 2007). Prior to 2011 we had been buying a regional Cauca coffee through Racafe, but there was variability of flavour between shipments and being a regional coffee, it could not always be traced back to the grower.
Through cupping together, Racafe was able to understand what we were seeking from Colombia and establish our requirements. They identified coffee from a small area in Cauca that had the cup character and consistency that we wanted. Good acidity and sweetness, light chocolate, brown sugar, citrus, scoring 84-85 points on the SCA scale.
From that moment, we haven't looked back. Whenever Pescador has been offered to us, we've bought the vast majority of it, if not all of it! Fast forward to today and Pescador makes up around 65% of our Colombian purchasing. It works great in our blends and is also a solid single origin filter coffee that has slotted in nicely as one of our “Always On” options in Australia and NZ, as well as being enjoyed as espresso in the UK.
About the Coffee
Grown near the town of Pescador by around 400 smallholder growers, the average farm size is only 3 hectares. The producers here generally operate small-scale wet-mills on site, but some do share facilities. Being modest-sized farms, they diversify their income by growing citrus, avocado, sugar cane and yuca on site too.
Racafe work closely with a local partner, Mario Trochez, who operates a buying station in Pescador. He buys processed parchment coffee from the growers. The growers are not contracted to Mario, so they are free to sell to anybody, but Mario pays the best prices for quality coffee and as a result, they do like to go to him.
He posts daily prices on a board at the buying station, and farmers deliver coffee throughout the harvest season. Coffee is graded on the spot and Mario will offer to buy all of it. The best quality coffee is set aside for our Pescador, but all grades are in demand.
Improving quality
In the above photo you can see three piles. The smallest pile is the best quality, the largest pile is rougher, lesser-quality coffee. Racafe and Mario set out to see that flipped; for the majority of the coffee to be the higher grade.
In 2016, they commenced a project to help growers in the Pescador region; they surveyed the producers to better understand the challenges they were facing.
The main issue identified was the ability to dry the coffee well. Due to the small-scale nature of the farms, they had limited space to dry coffee. It's also a mountainous region with plenty of clouds and rain during harvest. Racafe initiated educational sessions for the growers, teaching them better practices for drying and processing their coffee, and also provided building materials and plans for growers to build their own drying tunnels. These simple—but very effective—structures are made from wooden framing and plastic sheeting walls and roof, creating a drying area protected from rain and pests.
Racafe’s goal has been to help 20 farms each off-season (twice yearly in Colombia) to build these drying structures — 40 per year since 2016. We have since visited and seen this incredible work in action, and over recent years, have seen the quality and volume of Pescador increase considerably.
The result is a win-win: there is more high-grade Pescador coffee available for us to purchase each season, and the producers are starting to flip the piles of coffee around. Racafe reinvest a portion of the premium that we pay for this coffee, the growers get to produce more high-quality coffee and earn more money, and we get more of one of our favourite coffees each year.
