Growing Coffee in Colombia with Luísa de Salazar and Astrid Medina [143]

A few weeks ago, the folks at Amor Perfecto, a coffee roaster based in Bogotá, Colombia, reached out to me. They offered to send some coffees from a new project they were launching: a collaboration with the Frida Kahlo Corporation, which highlights women producers and innovators within the country’s specialty coffee scene. After I tried the two coffees they sent, they asked if I’d be interested in talking to the women who had grown them. One coffee was from the Tolima region in southern Colombia, and was grown by Astrid Medina—who won Colombia’s Cup of Excellence—a national competition that awards the country’s best coffees—in 2015. The other coffee came from northern Colombia, in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range, and was grown by Luísa de Salazar. Both growers were kind enough to share their triumphs and hardships with me on this podcast. A note on this episode: I highly recommend following along with the transcript, because there will be sudden shifts from English to Spanish. I ask all the questions in English and Astrid and Luísa respond in Spanish, while the Amor Perfecto team joins in and shares translation duties. The result is warm and rough-and-tumble episode—there are multiple voices and moments where people talk over one another—and in places the sound quality dips (for Astrid in particular, who was recording outside on her farm). Regardless of the audio hiccups, I believe hearing people tell stories in their own words is deeply valuable, and I hope you enjoy hearing from the folks who make your daily coffee possible. Here are Astrid Medina and Luísa de Salazar.