01
Harvest
Pickers choose only the ripe red cherries, one by one, by hand.
Ripe fruit gives a sweeter cup
1988 · Armenia
Where it started
His first year in coffee was spent at a mill in Armenia, learning to cup sample after sample at the cupping table.
1989 · Cartago
Head of quality
In October 1989 he was sent to Cartago as head of quality for Germán Merino y Cía., part of the Carcafé and Volcafé group. Every lot that left that mill passed through his cup.
1991 · 1995
Learning to run a mill
He trained to run the Simón Bolívar mill in Santa Marta, then moved to Pereira to work with Exportadores de Occidente. Years before, someone had told him he was too young to run a mill. Now he was learning to run them.
Estás muy joven para ser el administrador de la trilladora.
1995 · 2000
His own mills
In 1995 he became manager of Trilladora Otoño, paid in part with a share of the profits. Then he rented mills of his own in Cartago and Santa Rosa de Cabal, milling Excelso for exporters like Carcafé.
2000 · 2002
The king of coproducts
In 2000 he turned to the beans others set aside. When Colombia opened coffee imports in 2002, he began bringing coffee from Peru to supply Colombian mills, and coproducts became his life's work.
Today
Now he is the teacher
He is a partner in coproducts with a family of pergamino buyers who have worked the Eje Cafetero for more than 50 years. He ships coproducts from 50 to 1,000 defects to buyers in Ecuador and the United States, buys pergamino across Colombia's great coffee regions, from the Sierra Nevada to Nariño, and teaches the next generation everything he knows.
Ahorita con los chicos estamos de profesor. De teacher.
