For 12 years Asocafé Tatamá has been promoting the cultivation of high quality coffee that has reached the markets of the United States, Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia and now the United Arab Emirates
Oscar Osorio Ospina
Every year around 10 million kilos of dry parchment coffee are harvested in Santuario’s coffee plots, which are destined for the domestic, national and international markets. This level of production has placed Santuario as the second coffee producing municipality in Risaralda, after Belén de Umbría.
In this town, whose royal street adorned with flowered balconies serves as its entrance, there are some 5,800 hectares planted in coffee, most of them with a high level of technology, which places it in the first places in the country.
In 2012, the Asocafé Tatamá Producers Association was born in Santuario, which currently brings together 95 peasant families, most of them with small plots that together represent between 700 and 800 planted hectares with a production capacity of about 1,500,000 kilos on average per year.
Edier Ramos, manager of Asocafé Tatamá, spoke with EL DIARIO about the origins of this association of coffee growers: “First we started with the international market, but now we serve both markets, since as a result of the pandemic the local market became stronger. and we started to grow a lot locally. In fact, many people moved their conscience and began to consume very good coffee, which means that we first serve the local market and then the international market.”
Export type
In the case of external consumers, Santuario coffee is reaching the United States, the first foreign market served since the National Federation of Coffee Growers authorized the export of small batches, 50 kilos of roasted and 60 kilos of green coffee. Large shipments would then come to Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia.
In London, the association has another great ally in Tatamá Coffee, a company managed by a Santuareño who has lived there for a long time and who markets Santuario coffee. Through it, a year and a half ago the first container with coffee was shipped to the capital of Great Britain.
“Now we are beginning to open the United Arab Emirates market with the Bosque Coffee company headed by Ana Isabel Márquez, who is the owner of the brand and who has had interest in Risaralda coffees in the United Arab Emirates,” notes Ramos. Ana Isabel is a Colombian resident in Dubai who began to make space for Santuario coffee in the Arab world.
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12 years ago Asocafé Tatamá was born in this municipality
Towards Dubai
Just last week Asocafé Tatamá shipped a first container with 20,000 kilos of coffee to the United Arab Emirates, in an unprecedented event for this association of small products and which opens up new and very optimistic possibilities for economic growth.
The Secretary of Agricultural Development of Risaralda, Juan Carlos Toro, who has followed this process step by step, noted in this regard: "The Asocafé Tatamá Producers Association, from Santuario Risaralda, for the first time sends a 20,000 kilo container to the United Arab Emirates. It is the integration of the entire association, of all the coffee growers in the area, where this container is exported. Edier Ramos, the company manager, assures that the plans with this client are to ship four containers a year and, to the extent possible, continue growing in that direction.
“I must highlight that in this entire process, the participation of Café y Procesos is very fundamental, the company that carries out quality control of our coffee and the one that helps us guarantee the customer that the coffee arrives in the conditions they are requesting it,” Ramos notes. He explained that the association makes a first filter or separation of the coffees delivered by the producers in the company’s laboratories and with its own tasters. Subsequently, this company, also from Santuario and led by Hernando Tapasco and Olga Botero, carries out the quality control again to verify that the cups have the profile that the client is really asking for abroad. “So Café y Procesos becomes the company that is in the middle between Asocafé Tatamá and the end customer, guaranteeing and being a guarantor that what we are sending is what the customer is asking for,” says Ramos.
95 small coffee producing families are part of the association
quality coffee
Daniel Castaño, son of a coffee producer and linked to the association, states that: our versatility in grain production has led us to be able to provide the market with different profiles for the diverse palates that customers have today.
And he notes: “This export continues to be for us like all that accumulation of achievements that have been achieved little by little with the work of 12 years. Today we say that Asocafé Tatamá does not sell coffee, what we sell is experience, commitment, responsibility and transparency, which is what we continue to reflect.”
Regarding the container sent to Dubai, he explains that there are washed and processed coffees, microlots, varieties such as honey and geisha and coffees that closely link the variety of profiles that exist in the organization.
Asocafé Tatamá has its own brand called “Perla Dorada” which represents all members and some of them have also ventured into the exercise of their own brands that they process and roast in the association’s laboratories and rely on their Invima licenses.
Regarding “Perla Dorada”, Edier Ramos explains its main characteristics: “At Perla Dorada we first pack a washed coffee that we call Regional, which has very good characteristics with a cup rating between 84 and 85 points, but there we also pack our honey, natural and geisha lines.”
The association has its own coffee store in Santuario, where its main distribution point is, as well as in the supermarkets of that municipality. They also serve deliveries to specific clients in other cities and in Dosquebradas there is an allied store called Munay that distributes this coffee.
The association produces high-quality coffee with a cup rating between 84 and 85 points.
Specialty coffees
For the president of Asocafé Tatamá, for a coffee to be classified as special, there must be, as a first condition, a customer who values it as such. This is his theory on the matter: “I can have a coffee with many conditions in the cup, but if I don’t find a customer who can value it, it really won’t be special. Generally, special coffees are those processed under processing by producers on the farm, which have differentiated notes and when we do the cupping processes, that is, sensory analysis, we find a lot of complexity and a cup rating is above 84 points.” .
The truth is that Santuario coffee, after conquering demanding palates in markets in North America, Europe and Oceania, now arrives in the Arab world with the intention of staying. As Daniel Castaño says, this is the fruit of the joint effort of the producers, who not only grow coffee, but have become expert processors thanks to continuous training. This level of experience and commitment has allowed the association to offer a wide variety of coffees, successfully adapting to the demands of both the national and international markets.