Reporting in by cell phone, Katie told us that Friday the twelve baristas caught a 5 a.m. flight from Lima to Tarapoto, Peru. From there, they drove three hours up into the mountains, passing from rural communities through increasingly remote farms and fields of livestock, and then, eventually up into the mountainous jungle area where Finca la Encañada is located. The farm owner Dionisio Aguilar greeted the baristas when they arrived. Dionisio has been growing coffee on his 30-hectares of land for about 20 years, making him an excellent teacher for the baristas about the production and processing of specialty coffee.

That afternoon, the twelve baristas – speaking in Portuguese, English, Spanish, and Japanese – were divided into two teams for the next five days of competition. The daily competitions are begin organized by the Dionisio, and each team is in it to win! 

After a long day of traveling, the group headed to their sleeping quarters: a rustic wooden platform with a tin roof. Throughout the night, a heavy rain kept people awake as the drops of water pounded on the roof. 

This morning, people were a little discombobulated after little sleep. The first thing everyone wanted: coffee. But their challenge was how to brew it since Sustainable Harvest didn’t provide them with any equipment and the farmers there don’t usually brew quality coffee. Luckily, several baristas came prepared: Stefano from Greece brought a small airpot, and Thomas brought a Hario pour-over. They used an old grinder on the farm and coffee they had brought with them. But with so many people and only two small brewers, the group grew impatient. Eventually they resorted to simply putting grounds in the bottom of the cup, pouring boiling water in, waiting four minutes, and drinking the coffee off the top. 

This group of baristas, from Europe, North America, Asia and Latin America, are all serious coffee buffs. Just in the first day, they’ve already spent a lot of time comparing notes on the ways each person brews coffee and the cafe cultures in their respective home countries. Thomas, the national champion barista from Germany, even brought out his portable device to measure the hardness of the water the group had on hand to brew their morning cup of coffee. Luckily, the mountain run-off was right in the correct range for mineral content! 

After breakfast, Dionisio took the two teams out to the fields for their first challenge. The coffee harvest wrapped up a few weeks ago, but he needed the baristas to help comb the fields for any last ripe cherries. He also asked them to remove overripe or black cherries from the trees so that the coffee borer beetle, a common pest, has no home to breed and damage next year’s crop. While in the fields, Guatemalan barista champion Raul explained to the others a lot about varietals and showed them how to distinguish between Caturra, Catimor, and Typica plants.

Everyone got dirty and sweaty, but the farm manager Fermin judged that the Blackfoot team collected the most cherries that were still ripe and won the challenge! Then, both teams depulped the cherries in the manual depulper typical to small farms in Peru. This afternoon, the two teams have been debating whether to process their beans as washed or semi-washed to create the best quality cup.

All twelve barista say they are enjoying their time on the farm. Their biggest complaint: there’s not enough coffee to drink.