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Finding a good cup of joe in Colombia

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Colombia, the world’s third-leading coffee exporter, is famous for its high-quality, hand-picked beans. But while Colombia excels at growing and selling coffee, getting a decent cup in Colombia itself is another matter entirely as John Otis reports from Bogotá.

• National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia

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MARCO WERMAN: Hi, I’m Marco Werman. This is the World. Colombia is famous for its coffee. The South American nation produces high quality beans that are shipped all over the globe. In fact, Colombia is the world’s third leading coffee exporter after Brazil and Vietnam. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to get a good cup of coffee in Colombia. John Otis reports from Bogotá.

MALE VOICE: More and more people are waking up to Juan Valdez and his 100% Columbian coffee. And so can you.

JOHN OTIS: These vintage TV ads featuring Juan Valdez helped cement Colombia’s image as a coffee paradise. Yet average Colombians don’t pay much attention to the coffee they drink, and in most cases, it’s not very good. Much of the country’s best coffee is exported to the United States, Europe, and Japan. People in those countries drink 2 or 3 times as much coffee as Colombians who often sip hot chocolate or fruit juice for breakfast. Starbucks has yet to open a single store in Colombia. In fact, Colombians rarely call coffee by its Spanish name, café. Instead, they use a cruder term, tinto, which means dyed or stained.

MALE VOICE: Tinto, tinto, tinto, tinto.

OTIS: You can get good coffee at expensive restaurants, but even many tourist hotels have yet to master the art, and poor Colombians in rural areas often settle for low-grade coffee beans that some say ought to be used for compost.

WOMAN: [SPANISH]

OTIS: On the streets of Bogotá, many vendors serve coffee in large metal urns. Ligia Mora sells about 150 cups a day. She says other vendors allow the coffee to sit for hours in the urn, giving it a sludgy, bitter taste.

WOMAN: [SPANISH] Just imagine, the coffee boils all day long. If you drink it, you’ll die of a stomachache.

OTIS: Of course, bad coffee is available all over the world. But given Colombia’s reputation, new arrivals here are sometimes shocked. Brett Anderson is the restaurant critic for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

BRETT ANDERSON: Everyone associates Colombia with coffee. So when I went down there, I was assuming that the cuisine would be sort of bland and unmemorable, but that we’d drink really fabulous coffee. And as it turns out, you know, I remember a lot of the meals that we had, but not one memorable cup of coffee.

OTIS: Some coffee lovers take extreme measures to get a good cup.

MAN: [SPANISH]

OTIS: Wbeimar Lasso was recently named Colombia’s champion coffee taster. He visits coffee farmers every day, but can’t stomach what they serve him. So he travels with his own French press and a personal supply of coffee beans. To develop a new generation of connoisseurs, the Colombian Coffee Federation has turned to an old friend, the mythical Juan Valdez. A chain of Juan Valdez cafes, which are Starbucks-like stores run by the Federation, now serve good espresso, latte, and iced coffee drinks. Marcela Jaramillo, a spokeswoman for the chain, says 120 Juan Valdez cafes have sprung up in Colombia in the past 7 years.

MARCELA JARAMILLO: Now what’s happening is that people are starting to get more used to drinks like espresso. Espressos are relatively a very new drink here in Colombia.

OTIS: The Juan Valdez stores also hold seminars and workshops to teach Colombian hotel and restaurant workers how to make good coffee. One of the chain’s employees, Mauricio Romero, was recently named the country’s top barista. His specialty is the foamy milk on cappuccinos that he fashions into hearts and flowers.

MAN: [SPANISH]

OTIS: But nearly all the Juan Valdez cafes are in the upscale neighborhoods of Bogotá and other cities. Marcela Jaramillo says coffee drinks like frapuccino and double shot mocha have yet to take hold in the hinterlands.

MARCELA JARAMILLO: You have to teach people slowly and try to introduce them to new ways of drinking coffee, and it’s gonna happen. But I think it’s gonna take some time.

OTIS: For the world, I’m John Otis in Bogotá, Colombia.

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