Puerto Rico Went From Top Coffee Producer to This - Now It's Changing

Sure there were beds in the 90s that could do this. You know what I'm talking about, Like the hotel beds, put a quarter in, they vibrate. This reminds me of how I was held as a baby. Oh yeah? Explains why you got into coffee. Now you need to constantly be jittering like that. Hey guys, we're at a coffee farm. Welcome to coffee land. Today I'm off to Puerto Rico, and this is actually my first time on the island, as well as my first time visiting a coffee farm. But from the stories I've heard, Puerto Rico has a unique relationship with coffee, from being one of the world's largest exporters at one point to being left out of the conversation altogether. And this week we'll be joined with my close friend, Nicely, who actually originally put me on to these stories that are happening in Puerto Rico. So we brought him along with us. And our guides for the week will be Dom and Frankie, two brothers who recently discovered a rare and exclusive coffee native to Puerto Rico. And they're hoping this coffee will put Puerto Rico back on the map, and even get it in the running for the Cup of Excellence. But first, we need some coffee. They do a lot of these kind of shots. It's really fun. You gotta have them. If you don't have them, what are you gonna do? Can we do another take? I got an idea. I'm behind you. Oh ----! This is where you want to go. That's fine. So, Puerto Rico, I've heard it referred to as a bunch of different things, an island. You nicely referred to it as its own country. It is. That's a nation for sure, yeah. Puerto Rico is kind of intentionally in a kind of gray area politically, socially, economically. In some ways we're treated as a state, In some ways we're treated as a foreign country, In other ways we're treated as a colony. And Frankie, you split your time between here and New York a lot of the time? Yeah. I'm like the ping-pong ball that goes to and from, gets volleyed back and forth. I love coming to Puerto Rico. For me, coming to Puerto Rico is like a sense of coming home. It's a pride. I like being here. The energy. And to live it and actually feel it is something that I can speak for my brother as well, that we both are blessed to be able to do in our lives. I'm not here. I miss home. Right, right. This is the coffee that comes from our farm. You produced it, you forgot in the forest. We process coffee from our own farm, as well as from about 45 other farmers and all the neighbors. Very co-op, right. So this is what we call like a community lot, which means this coffee comes from about 25 different farmers. And it's a group of farmers that we've been working with and building relationships with for the past like three or four years. We have a long history of coffee production in Puerto Rico. It's true that at a time we were the coffee popes and kings, we were exporting coffee at some of the highest prices in the world, but the past hundred years, that has not at all been the case. No, no, it's trying to catch back up. Do you think it will? That's what you're trying to do, right? I think through the work of what they're doing, that's the excitement and the trajectory. We're showing off what Puerto Rico has to offer in terms of quality, especially the coffee. I think, at least in my opinion, it's like a distinct... Separate origin than a lot of other profiles from other regions. And the coffee is really great. I mean, this is actually really exceptional. We really need to be able to create exceptional coffee that can compete on the world stage. Yeah, we want it to be alive and want it to be a real thing. I think that's really beautiful. Their intention behind the project, you know, is every reason why I've been like, you know what, I can see and be excited about the future of Puerto Rican coffee. After learning more about the island, it was time to go deeper. But to get there, you have to go through deadly, twisting roads. If you follow them up all the way to the top, you will be met with an altitude that is prime for growing unique and rare coffees. This is our nursery. We're growing all Tipica seedlings in here. So the variety of coffee that we have here in this nursery and that we started this project with is a variety called Tipica 401 or Tipica 401 and it's a natural mutation of the original variety of coffee that was brought from Yemen to the Caribbean including Puerto Rico in the early 1700s. So Tipica is a particularly delicate but has extremely high quality you know potential. to create unique flavor profiles, just like, you know, geisha, or sidra, or a lot of- You have better yield than a geisha, though. No. No. So very low yielding, very delicate. How did you find it? This used to be all, you know, beautiful coffee fields. And it's been abandoned for around 100 to 120 years. And so it's just been a forest. Hiking through the thick forest up here, we found these skinny little trees that looked like coffee. And that's how we started this nursery with just seedlings that we've gone on rescue missions in the forest scavenging for. Do you want to keep going, walk and talk? I got a prompt for you guys. Move a little bit. Come be with us. Come join us nicely. What about Puerto Rico makes it possible to grow such amazing coffee? It's a great question. That would be your question. You know what I'm saying? Or we can keep all of that and say that you just said that yourself. No, I'm just joking. So in Puerto Rico, we're on the northwestern tip of the coffee belt, the golden zone, you know, across the narrow band of latitudes. So you actually get kind of a nice varying in weather temperature versus it being hot all the time, maybe closer to the equator. Yeah. Which is good for really complex coffees to grow. So these are the little seeds. This is actually like the coffee seed. Yeah, people go crazy on this thing because it looks like... It's cute. A little coffee bean. The next stage after the seed, these open up. So these are like scrunched up inside and then it opens. So you can see the leaf is coming out. That is so cool. I have never seen this part. Yeah, you can see it's split. It looks like lettuce. This is so cool. So these are some more mature ones. These are getting closer to being ready to distribute to farmers. This is the rarest coffee plant on the planet? Or one of them. Or one of them? Yeah. That's amazing. Thank you. I appreciate it. Like, alright, see ya, goodbye. You are responsible for this nursery? You are the person here all the time, giving all the love to the plants and bringing them to life? That kind of gives me some anxiety. Oh no! Is it too much pressure? Is it just the idea? The Tipica 401 is very susceptible to all the plagues, so I'm constantly worried about them because you have to keep up with them every day. You must be really proud when you see the babies grow up. Yeah, but I still have a lot of expectation of myself. Sure, I mean, you're doing a great job. These all look very successful to me. I don't know what I'm looking for. You sing to them, right? You sing to them? He makes up his own stories. I don't sing to them. Positive affirmations, you're doing great. When I go to the forest and you know, I feel like it takes a while to like adapt to the environment of the forest. So the singing helps me. To relax and to feel the environment of the forest. Stay grounded. Then I start finding all the chapolas. The plants come out when the songs come out. It also helps like bring the harmony within, which is the environment in the forest. There's lots of harmony. We're going to go up to the top of the mountain, and this is where I first discovered Pibica 401. Dom, does it level out, or are you just masochistic and like to do this every day? This is how I am. He's in better shape than I am. Right. How high are we at right now? We're at about 2,300 feet, and we're going to get to about 2,600. Oh, wow. We're going to go 300 more feet in elevation. Vertically. That's wild. Sorry, crew. Dom, have you almost ever fallen off the edge? No, no, no, no, no. Not on camera, we're not liable. As a coffee picker, this is the topography that we pick coffee in down these deep hills. Pickers are used to doing it for their whole life, so they get really good at it. So this is more mature Typica. These trees were not planted by us. These are like natural descendants of trees that were planted between 80 and 120 years ago. Just to show you the extreme non-uniformity of ripening, You have buds, you have some flowers coming up, like that's Typica flower right there. Oh, yeah. And you have some green cherries that are probably going to ripen in like late March like this. This is some cacao right here. That is specifically my favorite cacao tree. Wow. Yeah, there we go. Catch. That's some... Going deep. How do you know when they're ripe? Basically, you just scrape the outside and if the underneath is like the same color as the skin, it's ready. Yes. Yo, I do want to take one. I want to take the very bottom one. Oh, it's sticky. This one's definitely slimy, pulpy. It's slimy, but it's acidic in a peach-like way. It feels like a tart, fresh peach. Where did you learn how to do this? I went to school for it. Yeah, I know. You guys want to try one? See, did you get that? I bet. It's so good. Where is the cherry that you found? Oh my gosh, yeah, the ripe cherry. See how red? That is the cherry. That is a ripe cherry. This is so cool. There's a few of them. Chew it. Suck on the little seed. They're really soft in flavor. It's not like super acidic and punchy. It's like actually really balanced and nuanced. I cannot believe people spend their whole day doing this. All day, open that one up. When it's reached its peak ripeness and then removing it from that, all you're doing is risking that potential that ends up in the cup and stuff. So taking care of it the entire way, testament to the processing. This is amazing. These are great beans. They're a lot less tart than I thought they'd be. I don't know, like I guess growing up in coffee, like they always say, Coffee cherry, coffee cherry. And I just, part of my brain wants to think maybe there'll be some acidity to it. And also coffee has a lot of acidity post-roast, but. Yeah, but not the cherry. No, it's very soft. Yeah, I've been lied to. I've been lied to my whole life. There's definitely, it's not as fleshy pulpy as your classic cherry. No, it's not at all. I thought there'd be some more. Intensity, but it's just really mellow and nice and clean, clean The whole reason we process coffee is if you could scrape all this mucilage off It really wouldn't do the same thing as fermentation. It wouldn't taste quite the same So I explained it's like in wine. You're like the fermented grape juice is what you're drinking. That's the product In the case of coffee, you're fermenting the juice or the fruit around the seed. You're trying to get as much of those marinating juices to absorb into the seed. The yeast and bacteria, they release their gases. They fart right into the center of the seed. Exactly. It's delicious. It's fantastic flatulence. What are you going to put that on a t-shirt? As you all understand. People do not get the context, no. You want to see Marlene casually heading in? Stop! This is my best friend! Did he bite you? No! No, of course. Nice. He's a little mad about it, but I'm sure we're gonna get along. Hey, listen. I know you're mad. I'm mad too. We get frustrated. Life's hard, bro. You're a lizard in the jungle, dude. He's all, what you know about me? What you know about me? Esfiel, it's nice to meet you. Pleasure. This farm is beautiful. Thank you, thank you, yeah. We invaded nature here, and it has trapped us. Right, right. I am not happier any other place any more than here, or something like that. That's fantastic. This is where I'm happiest. Coffee is just an amazing thing, an amazing item. What inspired you to start a coffee farm in general? I was born in a coffee farm. I'm third generation. Coffee farmer. So somehow it ended up in my veins that when I was about this high, I decided one day I would have a farm. And this is like what you do full time. You live out here. This is your farm. Well, yeah. Sandoz and my farm. It was her decision, her vision to remain here, not be afraid of. Hardship or whatever, bingo. Name the farm after. Here we are. Look at Sandra. So, basically just run the farm mostly from here or whatever, but I don't chop or do a lot of hard work anymore. Sure, sure. Like Domenico does, but that's okay. Young people, as I said, were the future of coffee here in Puerto Rico. I would like to see, you know, tipica. Just take over the Puerto Rican market. You have such an organic and amazing opportunity to turn that into the star, so to speak, of the island, you know, and of what we offer. Well, I love this, like, the coffee in Puerto Rico and all the farms are very leaning back into themselves. It's a resurgence. It's just really beautiful. The legend I heard my whole first time driving up, you know what I'm saying, about this man, the legend is fat. It was amazing to experience Israel's energy and witness how even after so many years of farming, he still speaks with the same passion as if he's just getting started. But Dom told me, if you want passion, just wait till tomorrow. Mi casa, todo el café. El jardín en casa es café, vuelta redonda, tú buscas por ahí, tú dices, pero bueno, mira. Aquí nos encontramos en la finca La Mallorquina, en el municipio de Ajuntas, y todo eso se lleva gracias a este caballero aquí distinguido, llamado Fito Serrano. Este agricultor lleva muchos años operando aquí en estas tierras, que son parte de su familia. Cuando yo empecé aquí, en este monte, todo el mundo decía que yo estaba loco. For what I've heard, you're kind of a legend out here. That's what I've been told. You're a rock star. Sorry. Let's do it. Wait. Everything has not been negative, it has given a lot of life, a lot of employees here. Por eso somos orgullosos con esto. Yo amo mi finca. Todo lo que hay aquí, todo lo que yo tengo, todo lo ha dado el café. Hi. Hi. Aquí no es de que yo me pegué, que se cogió el pega cuatro, que se cogió el powerball, no. No. Por eso cada vez quiero y la amo. I love you. You understand me. Tú no necesitas dinero. Tú sabes que tú necesitas. Dale. I don't know, I missed most of that, but I definitely got the emphasis. I got the sweat part. I was there. I was with you. Yeah. It was an emotional movie picture. Yeah, definitely. How long has he been doing this? 42 years. Yeah. How? How is that possible? Those are all cherries that weren't picked. Oh, yeah. Too much. Too much. Yeah. Too much to pick. Oh, it's Moni. Do this style of work. Yeah. It's That's right, right. We'll make it dinner later. I'm going to leave this on the table for the waitstaff. There you go. So is there a lot of, I mean, I guess with like the kind of work you're doing, there is hope for a future younger generation, you and your brother. Very young. That's what's so powerful between the two. Right. There's like to see, you know, somebody who's been doing it for 42 years. Somebody's been at it for, you know, the better part of five, six years, you know, and carrying this amazing work. And so it is a testament to Hold on, sorry. You're in front of the camera, sir. Watch your feet, though. Yeah. Yeah, that generational divide. You don't put in all this work to just let it not be passed on. No. It's so important. That's basically what's been happening and stuff, you know. We've got to get that money off the ground. Back into the community of Puerto Rico because that money right there ends up doing so much more than just applying just to coffee, you know. It has an opportunity to bring up the entire island. I feel very proud. I'm proud. I'm a proud farmer. I like coffee. Thank you. We are here in front of our processing facility, which has all of our wet milling and dry milling equipment, all of our fermentation stuff. Would you call this the fermentation station, quite literally? The fermentation station. Yeah. We've definitely called it that before. Okay, good, cool. So we receive cherries here. We weigh them on the scale here. Once the cherries are received, we usually leave them in the bags and we leave it overnight. After the fermentation is done, then we decide if we're going to de-pulp it or leave it whole, dry it as a natural, a wash, or honey. When it's time to dry, we have this dryer set up. We use a chaff for like coffee parchment. So when we hull coffee, we take all the dry chaff and we burn it. It burns super clean. I got your camera in the way, I'm sorry. Let me clean, let me clean. All right, and I'm going with LeBron James. Oh, my eyes. So next, we're going to take the parchment off. Its promise is still in there. All right, team effort. Let's see. You got this side? Yeah, it's actually not that bad. We've talked about how many times it takes to take it off of, you know, a tree just to get one cup of coffee. And then again, all these different layers we just described, you know, having to get through to get to the point where somebody's even down to drink it. One step to pick it, you're getting paid for that, you know, then there's, yeah, the processing element of it, you know. Oh, that's so frustrating. Unbelievable. Roasting, that costs something, too. And it's been, it's one of my bigger inspirations and stuff, understanding, like, something like 80% of what's made off of coffee is in that retail sector, you know. I'm like, man, how do we shift that to be a lot better, you know, and feel, even if it's a little bit more expensive, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's been one of my bigger inspirations and stuff, understanding something like 80% of what's made off of coffee is in that retail sector, you know? I'm like, man, how do we shift that to be a lot better, you know, and feel even closer And close to 50-50, you know, if not more in sort of in the weight, you know, or on the side of, you know, some people producing it. This is your coffee roasting. This is just not typical. This is atypical. Let's go. I feel like watching their baby being born right now. You are. You're just watching the baby. You're watching your baby being born. That's disgusting. It's exhausting. He's the doula. He's the coffee doula. Let's go. And you're going off feel. You're not using a computer. You're not looking at roast curves. So I've done pretty extensive trial and error or experimenting, doing classes and whatnot on roast curves. There are times I can't really look at this and not sing in my head, you know? So the fact that you have that emanating onto our coffee here all the time, the excitement and the connection, you know what I mean? I can't help but pick up on that vibe right now, you know? Yeah, it's nice and even, but we're still a long ways away. When I open this, many of you guys are going to have the fun of holding up like plastic panels to stop this from falling down. Oh yeah, that's right. Like this? You want me to be like this? Oh, that's perfect. Hold it just like that. You're going to want it like here. The beams are going to be splashing off. Oh, I feel the heat. How do you feel? This is your coffee. It's very exciting. That took so much work. So many years. Ten years to grow and the farmers before also. This looks great. I'm excited man. What's up? It looks so good. It doesn't matter how hot something is, you know. Nice. Posting. And you get all the nuttiness and the aromatic. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. Look at that, there's so many bubbles because it just got roasted. All that CO2 is coming out. Yeah. So we're gonna get a little bit in the spoon like this and we're gonna go... Ssssssssss. Air radiant. Wow. Y'all did that? I'm proud of y'all. It's pretty good. It's really good. Kind of gives some say coffee vibes, a little bit. But a little more developed. Nice. I think it's delicious. What's your acidity? I love how you said acidity. Acidity. That's impressive. I didn't know they had a coffee score at 92 from Kenneth Davis. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot. I guarantee you, you could walk around Expo and ask people if that's even possible, and they'd say no way. Yeah. People would be amazed if you could score an 85 with Puerto Rican coffee, to be honest. Let alone there's one at least that scored a 92. You guys are showing off your coffees for the first time in a roast, and now we're here. It's a very special and historical moment for us. This is hugely historical. What this means for Puerto Rican coffee moving forward is so exciting. I think we're starting to see it make some noise. With the help of you guys, even more noise. Yeah, dude. We're not just out here by ourselves. There's other people that are also on the same path. People are going to see it. The passion is palpable. That's the hope, man. I mean, they're not the only ones, you know, but to be spearheading, you know, this project is incredibly exciting. And being off the island, I can't, you know, I'm excited to be an extension of the work that they do. Guys, I think we should do a slurp cheers. Slurp cheers! Salud! Buen Provecho! When you're here in Puerto Rico, you can just feel it. It's in the air. It's all those things that I've come to love about the coffee industry. And I hope that with all the work that Dom and Frankie are doing alongside these local farmers, that perhaps someday soon, you'll be able to buy a bag of coffee from your local grocery store That truly represents Puerto Rico.