{"id":11392,"date":"2019-03-11T13:15:27","date_gmt":"2019-03-11T13:15:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cafecrem.shortcode.es\/2019\/03\/11\/a-spaniards-fight-to-recover-the-worlds-best-coffee\/"},"modified":"2019-03-11T13:15:27","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T13:15:27","slug":"a-spaniards-fight-to-recover-the-worlds-best-coffee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cafecrem.com\/en\/a-spaniards-fight-to-recover-the-worlds-best-coffee\/","title":{"rendered":"A Spaniard&#8217;s fight to recover the world&#8217;s best coffee"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"voc-height-auto\"><a href=\"http:\/\/cafecrem.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/untitled.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-8049\" src=\"http:\/\/cafecrem.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/untitled-300x185.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"443\" height=\"273\"><\/a><br \/>\n<noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/static2.diariovasco.com\/www\/multimedia\/201903\/10\/media\/cortadas\/montaje-cafe-ke4E-U70865943485omH-624x385@Diario%20Vasco.jpg\" alt=\"A young Haitian day labourer smiles at the camera in the middle of the harvest. \"><\/noscript><\/div>\n<p>A young Haitian day labourer smiles at the camera in the middle of the harvest.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"voc-link-related\"><\/h3>\n<div class=\"voc-detail-header\">\n<h2>In Barahona it used to rain coffee in the fields until pests and the price crisis ruined its economy. A Catalan has set out to bring the best beans in the world back to this corner of the Dominican Republic. <\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"voc-author-timesocial voc-author-timesocial--100vw\">\n<div>\n<div class=\"voc-author-info\"><a class=\"voc-author\" title=\"GUILLERMO ELEJABEITIA\">GUILLERMO ELEJABEITIA<\/a><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u2018A black coffee, please. We choose the bar on the corner, the one closest to work or the one with the friendliest waiter, down the cup in a couple of sips and carry on with our routine, but we generally don&#8217;t care about the origin or quality of what we have just consumed. Despite the fact that we drink more than 1,200 cups per year, <strong>coffee remains a great unknown. <\/strong>We have travelled to one of the most traditional coffee-growing regions in the Caribbean to discover what&#8217;s at the bottom of a cup of coffee.  <\/p>\n<p>\u00abA black coffee, please. We are in <strong>Barahona<\/strong>, south of la<strong> Dominican Republic<\/strong>. The alleyways of the market bustle like a coffee pot, but the brew they serve is not very good; it&#8217;s made from leftovers that aren&#8217;t good enough to be exported. Between vegetable stalls, fly-covered piles of meat, fragrant fish and even medicines sold in bulk, dozens of motorbikes squeeze through. Like life here, they make their way through carefree, but are not above being involved in accidents.    <\/p>\n<p>There are hardly any tourists to be seen. The beaches of the Enriquillo region have never been good for bathing, but <strong>its valleys are fertile<\/strong>HUntil not so long ago, the countryside fed the population fairly comfortably. Bananas, sugar cane and <strong>coffee<\/strong>, lots of coffee. It is said that<strong> \u00abthe conditions were so good that people hardly needed to look after the plantations.\u00bb<\/strong>. In the 1980s, the Barahona area alone exported almost 180,000 quintals of coffee a year (at 46 kilos per quintal). In 2018, this was less than 22,000 quintals for the whole country. What happened?       <\/p>\n<div class=\"voc-detail-summary\">\n<p>Most of the pickers are Haitians fleeing the chaos in their country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>leavesMuch of the blame lies with <strong>rust, a fungus that destroys coffee leaves<\/strong> y lleva diezmando la producci\u00f3n de Centroam\u00e9rica desde los a\u00f1os 90. En 2010 se declar\u00f3 un nuevo brote de la plaga, cada vez m\u00e1s virulenta por los efectos del cambio clim\u00e1tico. <strong> Speculation on international prices did the rest.<\/strong> In 2001, a pound of coffee beans was worth 0.41 dollars, not enough to cover production costs, and thousands of families left the coffee plantations for the east to make a living from tourism. Today the price is back below one dollar and has once again set alarm bells ringing in the sector. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018A black coffee, please. We are in Polo, a small town at the foot of the Sierra de Bahoruco, populated by small coffee growers. On the road you can see some piles of beans that the more modest harvesters put out to dry on the asphalt, \u2018in the hope that the traffic of cars will speed up the process\u2019, explains Jos\u00e9 Miguel Medina, head of the local radio station. They need money fast. \u2018Polo used to be rich and now lives subsidised by the government, it has become one of the poorest municipalities in the country,\u2019 laments Mayor Danilsa Cuevas. The remaining producers are older, 75% lack land titles and access to credit is a chimera. Without care and pest control, productivity is derisory.      <\/p>\n<h3>Haunted estates<\/h3>\n<p>But there are a handful of farms that produce more every day. \u2018The neighbours say we have a bac\u00e1, a kind of pact with the devil,\u2019 he jokes. <strong>C\u00e9sar Ros<\/strong>. This <strong>Catalan master coffee maker<\/strong> is the grandson of the founder of the Barcelona-based Cafecrem, now part of the Costa Brava distribution group, and has spent a decade in the region trying to make the most of some of its best locations. He produces a speciality coffee, using local varieties in a traditional way, \u2018which is three times more expensive and less productive\u2019, but by rationalising the harvest and encouraging simple tasks such as pruning, weeding and raising the shade, he manages to obtain the equivalent of around 45 cups per plant.   <\/p>\n<p>Muchos quieren trabajar para \u00e9l. El jornal en las fincas de la compa\u00f1\u00eda se paga al mismo precio que el resto -100 pesos (2 d\u00f3lares) por cada lata de 20 litros de fruto recogido- pero aqu\u00ed las plantas est\u00e1n mucho m\u00e1s cargadas. Al final del d\u00eda, los recolectores se re\u00fanen en el batey para entregar la cosecha. La mayor\u00eda son haitianos que cruzan la frontera para huir del caos en el que lleva sumido el pa\u00eds desde hace d\u00e9cadas. Aguardan pacientemente a que el jefe de campo examine cada saco con una rudimentaria tabla de defectos. Si de la muestra de 50 bayas, m\u00e1s de 5 tienen falta, tendr\u00e1n que vaciar la bolsa para eliminar los granos verdes o sobremadurados, antes de volver a pasar el examen. Josefa sonr\u00ede. Nunca falla y es siempre la que m\u00e1s cosecha, por eso sus compa\u00f1eros la llaman &#8216;la millonaria&#8217;. Sus manos curtidas saben elegir bien. M\u00e1s le vale, si quiere sacar adelante a su rosario de hijos.        <\/p>\n<p>\u2018A black coffee, please. We have just had lunch at the factory where the production from the farms managed by Cafecrem arrives every day. Ros and his team have developed a semi-craft process that allows them to take advantage of the natural sweetness of the pulp to obtain a coffee that needs practically no sugar. They call it Mieludo and it consists of soaking the fruit for 16 hours to initiate fermentation, so that the pulp adheres to the bean, which is then left to dry in the shade on African beds for more than a month. After sorting by size and a final sieving carried out bean by bean by bean by a group of local women, the result in the cup is a coffee \u2018with a lot of body, marked but very balanced acidity and notes of caramel\u2019, explains the master coffee maker during a tasting in which he gets to try more than twenty samples. Infused slowly and served in a cup to appreciate the nuances, the experience is nothing like drinking a cup in two sips at the bar.     <\/p>\n<p>Two weeks after the trip, I recognise the logo of the company founded by C\u00e9sar&#8217;s grandfather in a caf\u00e9 in Barcelona, and I remember Josefa&#8217;s tanned hands, the twinkle in Jos\u00e9 Miguel&#8217;s eye, or the smile of the Haitian man who illustrates these lines and whose name I forgot to ask. \u2018A black coffee, please. <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>For more information:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.diariovasco.com\/sociedad\/viaje-fondo-taza-20190311093750-ntvo.html\">https:\/\/www.diariovasco.com\/sociedad\/viaje-fondo-taza-20190311093750-ntvo.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ideal.es\/sociedad\/viaje-fondo-taza-20190310085703-ntvo.html\">https:\/\/www.ideal.es\/sociedad\/viaje-fondo-taza-20190310085703-ntvo.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A young Haitian day labourer smiles at the camera in the middle of the harvest. In Barahona it used to rain coffee in the fields until pests and the price crisis ruined its economy. A Catalan has set out to bring the best beans in the world back to this corner of the Dominican Republic. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[307],"tags":[358,376,308,365,366,357],"class_list":["post-11392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-barahona-en","tag-catalonia","tag-coffee","tag-dominican-republic","tag-history","tag-honeysuckle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafecrem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafecrem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafecrem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafecrem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafecrem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cafecrem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafecrem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafecrem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafecrem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafecrem.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}