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Finca Rancheria

Francisco Romero, a Jesuit priest born in Bogota, Colombia, was sent in 1834 to the church in Salazar of the Departamento de Norte de Santander as a missionary. Aware the region was suitable for coffee cultivation, he came up with the idea that impoverished peasants could make a living by cultivating coffee.

When peasants came to church for confession, he preached that in return for God’s forgiveness, they should plant coffee trees, and he gave them coffee seedlings. The trees started to bear fruit. With coffee beans harvested in neighboring farms, their beans, named Cucuta Coffee, were exported to Spain from the now Venezuelan port of Maracaibo. This was the first export of Colombian coffee. Later Salazar became Colombia’s first commercially managed coffee growing region.

Today, Finca Rancheria in Salazar grows the rare and genuine Tipica, a cultivar of Arabica. The small Finca Rancheria of 5 hectares (12 acres) was passed down to Jose Dario from his father, and he tends the farm alone except at harvest. His farm is run almost like extensive agriculture (?) without any use of fertilizers and agricultural chemicals.

Rebirth of Legendary Colombian Coffee

Jose’s father ran a business roasting and distributing coffee, and he used to often wish that he could drink Colombian coffee of the old days. The coffee must have had extraordinary flavor and aroma. Jose wanted to rediscover the legendary coffee and to add it to his Gran Cru Cafe lineup.

First, Jose started studying the history of Colombian Coffee. The region where coffee was first cultivated in Colombia was East of Cucuta, close to the present border with Venezuela. Today the coffee region is mainly in Cucuta’s Western mountainous range. There was a time when guerillas took over the Eastern region of Cucuta and they had largely abandoned coffee production.

Thinking that there could be in the Eastern region Tipica trees cultivated over 170 years ago, Jose made a trip to Colombia. Cucuta, the capital of the Departamento de Norte de Santander, is located only 6 kilometers (4 miles) from the Venezuelan border. He visited many farms in the mountains looking for the finest coffee but what he found were various species planted together and hybridized. No sooner had he wondered if there could be no genuine Tipica left when,he found Finca Rancheria.

Finca Rancheria had 5 hectares (12 acres) that grew genuine Tipca. The coffee trees grew naturally, even without pruning, under the cover of dense shade trees. The soil was superbly rich, and further enriched by fallen leaves of shade trees.

The shade trees blocked sunlight and the coffee trees bore poor fruit. This created a natural fruit-thinning process, and those harvested yielded a small crop of highly dense coffee beans. He walked around a steep slope with excitement. Up the slope he found sunlit Tipica trees with higher quality cherries which he selected for Grand Cru Cafe. This section is locally called the Case de Trupial (the House of Trupial) after the Trupial birds which build their nests in the shade trees.