Las Orquideas has been our staple milk coffee for going on seven years now.
Doing the same coffee for this long has meant a few things.
It has meant that we have been able to focus and learn so much about the nuance of the terroir, the environment and this individual cooperative. We have been able to build a much better understanding of how to relate to this coffee.
It has also given us a really focused and consistent profile over time.
And that consistency is really important to us, because after a while you can almost forget about trying to constantly chase quality and instead settle into it. You can lean on a relationship.
That is probably the beautiful thing about Las Orquideas.
We buy this coffee through Caravela, who are incredibly meticulous about how they grade coffee, how they physically analyse it, how they track it and, importantly, how they understand what is actually happening with producers at origin.
For us, traceability really is the precursor to any form of sustainability.
If we do not understand what is actually going on, we cannot change what is going on. We cannot change outcomes.
And when coffee became much more expensive after the global pandemic, and there was actually more incentive in some cases for producers to simply sell lower-quality coffee while the market was high, we decided to double down on quality.
We bought an even higher grade and moved from A to AA grade.
Las Orquideas is an AA grade coffee, two grades above Caravela’s minimum, because we wanted the extra work required to produce that quality to actually be worth doing.
If the coffee meets that quality, we pay for it.
That is where the incentive lies.
We are dealing with a small group of local female producers. Sometimes three of those producers might make up the lot, sometimes it might be one, depending on whose coffee reaches that quality point. But we are always returning to the same group, and paying the same really high premiums for the work.
That continuity means a lot to us.
It also means we can write forward contracts and make commitments years ahead, which gives producers more security and gives us more security as well. We can understand our costs, understand our supply and actually think about sustainability in three-year blocks rather than just wondering what coffee we are going to buy next season.
And this is really where Las Orquideas becomes about more than flavour.
Because sustainability, to me, is not really a buzzword.
I mean: will coffee exist in ten years’ time?
Are producers able to raise kids? Are they able to look after themselves? Are they able to have some disposable income and some form of actual lifestyle? Can they be human, rather than simply surviving off whatever we are trying to pay them?
That is the sustainability I am interested in.
We are small fish. We are a very small roaster.
But we are trying to show that you can buy coffee like this. You can sell coffee like this. There is a market for doing the right thing and investing in the future of things.
There does not have to be this incessant race to the bottom.
The greatness in a cup is not just the flavour profile.
It is how the coffee was bought. How it was traded. How it moved across the world. Where the money went. Who was looked after along the way.
That is the value in the cup.
And that is really what Las Orquideas has come to stand for here.
I would honestly love to be buying ten times as much of it.
I would love more people to be putting coffee in their grinder that has been so beautifully sourced and cared for by the producers, the exporters, the importers and us, all the way along.
And I want the person drinking it to feel part of that too.
To drink coffee at ease.
To feel at peace with the decision they have made about where their coffee comes from and where their money goes.
Because coffee is something so many of us drink almost every day, love, swear by and feel attached to.
I just think we now need to get back in control of how we relate to it.