In late 2024, Jonathan and I got a chance to visit a bunch of farms in San Agustín, Colombia, and as you'd expect with a whirlwind trip like that, a lot of those visits start to blend together. Arnulfo was not that. His personality is as big as his farm, and every moment with him is a core memory I will never forget. The picture of him on this profile page is my iPad's wallpaper and is just quintessential coffee farm visit imagery to me. He's everything I love about coffee and why I tell people, I'm retired, I just go to work during it.

The Most Colombian Guy You've Ever Seen

Arnulfo is clearly the most Colombian-looking guy you've ever seen. That's not an exaggeration. He told us that the country of Colombia actually asked him to be the next face of Colombian coffee, basically the Juan Valdez figure, and he said no because they weren't going to pay him for it. His response was, "Why would I give you my face for free?"

Walking the Farm

When we visited, we spent a few days going to farms and talking to producers. We're walking across Arnulfo's farm and he grabs the machete off his hip, chops it at a citrus tree, and hands us half of an orange he'd just cut right off the branch. It was one of the juiciest, best oranges we've ever had.

While we're standing there eating this orange, we're overlooking his fields and he starts talking about how coffee leaf rust wiped out an entire side of a mountain probably eight years ago. So what he did was plant different varieties on that mountain to protect against it the next time. Coffee leaf rust loves to hop from tree to tree, but it doesn't cross varieties easily. If you can keep them separated, you can protect your farm. So he planted Pink Bourbon, Tabi, and Colombia across that area.

That first harvest, he hadn't communicated to his pickers that these were different varieties. So they picked them all together and it became this blend. Arnulfo was pretty upset about it. But he went back and cupped them kind of blindly, and it turns out that this variety blend was the best coffee they'd had all year.

So now they do it intentionally. What started as a solution to a coffee leaf rust problem, followed by a mistake from the pickers, turned into the best coffee Arnulfo produces. And that's what we bought.

A lot of times in specialty coffee, you'll see a variety blend and think, "Oh, that's lower quality. We'd rather have single variety coffees." But when you get to go to the producer at their farm and they talk about the history of why that came to be, and why it's actually the best coffee they offer, it gets you excited to sell these variety blends.

Lunch on the Mountain

The last story I want to tell about Arnulfo is from lunch that day. His family made lunch for us and we're sitting on the back porch at this table, watching a storm come in, overlooking just this beautiful landscape of coffee farms and mountains. It's hard to describe how beautiful it was. Arnulfo kind of looks back and says, "Isn't this amazing?"

We all agreed. And then he told us about the time he went to America. He'd had a Cup of Excellence coffee, and he wanted to go get his coffee at a coffee shop. So he went to a shop in Chicago, ordered a cup, and couldn't believe they charged him $11. But that wasn't the thing that got him. He's sitting there, and he looks around the coffee shop, and there's not a single person talking to each other. Every single person in the shop is behind their computer, staring at a screen, not really enjoying coffee. He looked at us and said, "You Americans don't know how to enjoy life. You're just always working, always looking at your computer."

And honestly, he's right. That's one of the reasons I left my IT job and went full time into coffee. My favorite days are when I walk into the shop in the afternoon and everyone's sitting at tables talking to each other and laughing and enjoying life, not when everyone's behind their computers.

Arnulfo's Farm

Arnulfo farms Finca El Faldón and Finca Primavera with his son Diego and his brother Luis Felipe, up in the hills near the town of San Agustín in Huila at about 1,840 meters. He's a member of Asociación Los Naranjos, a group of coffee-producing families in the area who have been working together for years to improve their quality. When Arnulfo won the Colombia Cup of Excellence in 2011, his neighbors in Los Naranjos came to him for advice, and he was happy to help.

Why Arnulfo

This is what we mean when we say direct trade isn't just a label for us. It's not a marketing term on a bag. It's sitting on Arnulfo's porch eating lunch his family made, watching a storm roll in, and hearing the story behind the coffee we're about to put on our shelves. It's eating oranges off his trees and walking his fields and understanding why a variety blend that started as a mistake is actually the best thing he produces. We source Arnulfo's coffee through our partnership with Cafe Imports, and we're looking forward to working with the Leguizamo family for a long time.