Coffee Farm Due Diligence Tours

November is here and for many parts of the US and Europe that means winter is upon us and it’s time to wrap up in warm clothes!

For our recent group of coffee farm tour attendees, they were able to escape the cold and spend a beautiful, relaxing and warm weekend in the Tropics.

Now, you can too!

Come join us on January 18th, 19th and 20th in Boquete, Panama for our 1st group coffee farm tour of 2019 (our 12th consecutive tour) and “kick the trees” for yourself.

When our intrepid travelers arrived in Panama City they spent a few days visiting the Old Town and the Panama Canal and the weather was a toasty 89 degrees.

Moving on to Boquete, Chiriqui where our coffee farms & facilities are located and where our team were waiting for them, it was a nice pleasant 72 degrees.

Perfect weather for hiking up and around some of our high-altitude specialty coffee farms.

Their main reason for coming here was not for the weather…but it was a nice added bonus!

They came here to do their final “boots on the ground” due diligence to see if owning parcels in our newest coffee farm was a good fit for them, and for their real estate portfolios.

Another important factor was getting to know some of the team that has been strategically built here over the last 5 years.

For the entire 3 days of the tour we were accompanied by Andres Lopez, our General Manager of Farming Operations, and Valentina Pedrotti, our in-house Biologist and Value Chain Analyst.

Starting out on Horqueta 1 we were able to hike around the farm and were very pleased to see how the saplings have grown and how healthy they looked.

These saplings were planted 2 years ago and are already producing some cherries.

Not enough to sell, but enough for our team to process and evaluate to get an idea of the flavor profile and quality of the coffee from this farm.

The pies de resistance was the tour of our wet & dry coffee processing mill. One of, if not the, most modern and efficient mills in the country. Some of the older, existing mills have been in place since the 70’s, take up huge amounts of space and using thousands of gallons of water.

As we have the newest equipment, we operate using gravity and belts to replace most of the water and the small amount of water we do use, is 100% recycled and re-used so there is zero negative impact on our environment.

Even the dried coffee skin, or parchment, is kept and used to power the furnace that heats the air to dry the crop.

Truly a Closed Loop System!

In the coffee testing laboratory, we were treated to a full cupping and grading demonstration. This process is extremely difficult, strict and detailed. You can read about it in more detail in our previous article What is Specialty Coffee?

Andres and Valentina explained how specialty coffee is evaluated based on aroma, fragrance, flavour, aftertaste, acidity, body, balance, uniformity, clean cup, sweetness and defects. And our guests were able to try a hand, and nose, at it themselves.

It was not “all work and no play” as each night we hosted our guests to some amazing meals and we were once again treated to an amazing dance performance from the folkloric group that we sponsor.

We have just firmed up the dates for our 1st group coffee farm tour of 2019 so if you like what you have read and want to come to our 12th consecutive tour and “kick the trees” yourself, come join us on January 18th, 19th and 20th in Boquete, Panama.

Click here to find out more, reserve your seat and escape the winter!