A love letter to coffee.

Hello dear Reader.
Relax, stay safe, take a cup of coffee and read on.
‍

The purpose of this Letter is to communicate the passion and love for coffee we feel in this family and I feel personally.

It all started around 1972, when Don Bernardo Lopera, our grandfather bought the first piece of land that now is part of the Finca Lindalaja. After working hard for many years in factories and supermarkets he wanted to give the family a place to escape during weekends and vacations in the Colombian countryside. Juan José, one of four children Don Bernardo had with Doña Eugenia Sanchez, grew up travelling between Medellin and the small farm in the Santo Domingo region of Antioquia. Here he learned to love nature and saw how his father sowed the land with coffee, tended to it carefully and after giving each plant the attention and love that it needed, harvested coffee that was famous in Santo Domingo for its abundance and good taste.
My father Juan José always had a keen interest towards the spiritual and oriental and so he began his meditation practice when he was 16. The primary rainforests around the farm were natural temples, where he would sit down, connect with nature and himself and start practicing the first meditation techniques brought from india that he had read in the few spiritual oriental books that had reached colombia during the time. Many years later, now with our renewed coffee project, we teach our workers that gratitude and good energy towards the soil, the plants and the animals is very important and remind them to hold thoughts of love while working the fields.
I've loved coffee since i was a child. I remember the first cups of tar-like black sludge from an overdosed Bialetti left too long on the fire with lots of love. I was 10 or 11 then. Maybe there was something wrong or very right with me at the time but even that young I loved the taste of good strong black coffee. It was 2019 though that the first seed of an Idea was planted in my head to jump head to toe into the coffee industry. Finishing the last semester of university, where I learned how to ferment stuff, I was struck on the head with the obvious.

I love coffee.
We have a coffee farm.
Let's do coffee!

Juan had already, and sometimes silently, started planting again in 2017. The farm had lain barren for over 20 years due to violent times in colombia during the 80's and 90's and with peace and public investment coming back, he decided it was time. I was lovestruck and started buying specialty coffee bags from the local roasteries around me in Dresden and later Berlin, getting my own hand burr grinder and small espresso-machine to enjoy my first tastes of specialty coffee. I'm sure you know the difference dear reader. What a world of aromas and tastes opened up. With that my fate was sealed and I started investing a LOT of time into learning as much as I could about coffee in general. Finishing up my Diploma in Bioprocessengineering I moved to Berlin and was lucky enough to meet Irena, the CEO of the Berlin School of Coffee who offered me a freelance consultant position at the school. Here I've held multiple barista trainings, roasting and sensory introductions and consulted roasters and future roasters in espresso blending and sensory skills.
With the Berlin lockdown in full swing we as a family have decided it's time to take the plunge into the cold water and bring our coffee from colombia to germanys capital and offer our coffee filled with love for the comunity that helps us produce it, for the land we produce it on and for you dear reader.
With this I hope to transmit to you at least a small part of the love for all things coffee we have in this family.

Kindly
Esteban

‍