Barrington Coffee Colombian Mesa de los Santos Don Telmo Reserva Especial
Mesa de los Santos is a coffee farm located in Bucaramanga, Colombia, and is owned by the family of Oswaldo Acevedo who have been growing coffee here since 1872. This is a single-origin coffee that you can find on the market from several roasters, and I’ve seen it from Terroir in the past as well as Great Barrington (of course, I more easily knew that Terroir’s Colombian was from Mesa de los Santos, whereas with Great Barrington the packaging didn’t indicate this at all, but I’ve beat this drum before). In fact, this is certainly one of the more prominent farms worldwide producing single-origin coffees and shipping them worldwide, as evidenced by the number of roasters selling their coffee as well as the rather extensive website that they’ve setup to educate consumers.
There are two particularly notable elements regarding this farm. The first is the extent of their efforts to reduce the ecological impact of their coffee-growing activities. The coffees are all shade grown as part of an effort to make the farm’s environment as bird-friendly as possible while gradually reforesting the area. As proof of this, you can find on their website a list of the many bird species that have been sighted on the farm as well as the number of shade tree varieties and their steady growth in numbers since 1995. While these efforts are not wholly unique in the coffee world, the level of their effort certainly stands out.
The second notable element is that 100% of the coffee is grown and processed on site. The farm has their own nursery where they raise new trees. The coffee trees are grown without the use of pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic fertilizers and the farm is certified by BioLatina and the Rainforest Alliance. The coffee cherries are handpicked and processed the same day. Later they are sun-dried and then dry-processed in the farm’s own mill. The sum product is a coffee whose cultivation and preparation is the result of the efforts of a group of growers who are clearly invested in producing more than just a cup of coffee, but the best and most sustainably produced cup coffee. It’s clear that they put nearly every effort in to ensuring the success of their coffees.
Learning more about a coffee farm such as this is refreshing and eye-opening. Shade-driven, bird-friendly coffee farms are getting an increasing amount of notice these days as the impact of deforestation in southern hemisphere countries on the migratory patterns and breeding grounds of bird populations becomes better documented. To see that this one farm is acknowledging this situation and in response is making such efforts, and additionally trying to make people aware of their efforts, is heartening. Coffee production is notorious for its potentially deleterious effects on the environment and even one farm’s efforts can be a huge step in the right direction.
Additionally, it is rare for a coffee grower to be able to process their coffee entirely on their own. For most coffee farmers economics simply make this impossible. Farms such as Mesa de los Santos or La Minita in Costa Rica are notable exception, and in my experience this shows in the finished product. Their coffees are superior at the very least in the sense that they are producing a consistently high-quality product, as evidenced by the consistency of these coffees as produced by the various roasters in this country. The bottom line is that their coffees are proof that the more attention to detail and supervision throughout the coffee production process that a grower can exhibit will make its presence felt in the final product, the green coffee bean.
From the first sip this was clearly an excellent coffee. One of those cases where I absent-mindedly took a sip while typing, and then had to momentarily entirely stop doing what I was doing to focus on the second sip, my attention entirely caught by what was in the cup.
This is a light roast, Barrington indicating it to be a City roast. The nose is an enticing mix of nuts, chili peppers, and blueberries. The palate is remarkable with chocolate cake, rich cocoa flavors, a hint of warm lemon curd, all underscored by a red berry acidity. The finish is medium-length and sweet with red fruits and a pleasing earthiness.
In sum, this is a really great coffee, very well-roasted by Barrington Coffee Roasters. When you add to the sheer enjoyability of drinking it the knowledge of the lengths to which the producers go to produce the beans, then the result is a top-shelf coffee. So even though I continue to find a certain disappointment in Barrington’s disinterest in marketing the unique products they’re offering, in this case that’s only the most minor of irritants, overcome by how easy this coffee is to enjoy.
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