What a trip through Colombia taught me about coffee, ingenuity, and Finca Las Mercedes
There’s a big difference between knowing where a coffee comes from and actually standing where it grows.
On my trip through Colombia, I had the opportunity to visit a number of coffee farms and spend time with the people behind the coffees we buy. You arrive thinking you understand the basics—coffee is grown, picked, processed, dried, and eventually makes its way to us. But moving from farm to farm reveals something far more interesting.
Every farm has its own answer.
The terrain changes. The water supply changes. The equipment changes. The varieties change. Most importantly, the people change. Each producer is working within a particular set of circumstances and figuring out how to make better coffee, support their family, and take care of the land they depend upon.
At one farm, that ingenuity might show up in a washing station designed to conserve water. At another, it might be an entirely different solution built from the ground up.
And then I visited Edgar Heladio Ossa at Finca Las Mercedes.
A Return to Edgar’s Coffee
This is the second time we’ve had the opportunity to offer Edgar’s coffee at Tectonic, and after visiting Las Mercedes, I’m even more excited about where this relationship can go.
Finca Las Mercedes sits in San Isidro, Acevedo, in Colombia’s Huila region, with coffee growing between 1,600 and 1,770 meters above sea level. Edgar has earned recognition for the quality of his coffee over the years, including a second-place finish in Pitalito’s 2011 Cup of Excellence challenge. But the story we encountered wasn’t really about competition. The picture that emerged was of a farmer deeply invested in coffee, his community, and the environment around his farm.
That’s something you understand differently when you get to see a farm for yourself.
What Happens to the Rest of the Cherry?
One of the things that stuck with me at Las Mercedes was a system Edgar had built around something that could easily be viewed simply as waste: coffee cherry pulp.
When coffee is processed using the washed method, removing the coffee seed from the fruit leaves organic material behind. At Las Mercedes, that material doesn’t necessarily represent the end of the line.
Edgar has built a system that collects coffee pulp and captures the biogas produced as the organic material ferments. Rather than allowing that gas to go unused, it’s redirected back to the family home, where it can be put to work in the kitchen.
It’s not some abstract sustainability statement printed on a bag. It’s a farmer looking at what his operation produces and asking, What else can I do with this?
And that mentality runs throughout Las Mercedes.
The farm’s food waste and coffee cherry pulp are also composted to create organic fertilizer for its coffee and extensive fruit and vegetable crops. Inorganic waste is separated, collected, and sent to a recycling facility in nearby Pitalito. Edgar has also planted long corridors of native trees and vegetation around the farm’s three natural springs, creating protective barriers that have helped wildlife return to the property. Portions of the farm remain protected forest reserve as well.
Sustainability Doesn’t Have a Blueprint
That experience helped crystallize something for me.
We tend to talk about “sustainability” as though there’s a single destination—or a list of boxes a farm needs to tick. Traveling through Colombia made it much harder to see it that way.
A farm is a living system.
What makes sense on one property may make absolutely no sense on the next. A producer with one set of resources might focus on reducing water consumption. Someone else may find a way to transform an agricultural byproduct into energy. Another farmer may put their effort into soil health, forest conservation, water protection, or something we haven’t encountered yet.
The exciting part isn’t necessarily finding the answer.
It’s seeing farmers find their answer.
And when you visit these places, you begin to understand just how much knowledge, experimentation, resourcefulness, and plain old problem-solving exists behind a cup of coffee.
And Yes, the Coffee Is Bloody Good
All of that would make for a fascinating visit even without tasting the coffee.
Fortunately, Edgar also produces some seriously beautiful coffees.
For this release, we’re featuring the Colombia variety, grown at Las Mercedes and processed using a traditional washed method. The producer information for the coffee describes a 36-hour fermentation followed by washing and 16 days of drying in a marquesina.
In the cup, we’re finding red grape, dried dates, and black tea.
There’s a lovely progression to it: fruit up front, that deep sweetness of date underneath, and black tea bringing everything home. It’s expressive without being unruly—a coffee we can happily keep coming back to.
Which seems fitting, because that’s how we feel about the producer as well.
The Beginning of Something Longer
This is our second offering from Edgar, and we don’t want it to be our last.
One of the great privileges of buying coffee is having the opportunity to turn a transaction into a relationship. Visiting Las Mercedes gave me context that a sample, spreadsheet, or cupping table simply can’t provide. I got to see some of the thinking behind the coffee and the individual decisions that make this farm unlike any other.
That’s ultimately what I brought home from Colombia.
Coffee farms aren’t interchangeable. Neither are the people who run them. Each has its own landscape, challenges, ideas, and solutions. And when we’re fortunate enough to find a producer making coffee we love in a way we respect, the goal isn’t just to buy a lot.
It’s to come back.
We hope this is only the beginning with Edgar Heladio Ossa and Finca Las Mercedes.
Taste the new release from Finca Las Mercedes and discover what Edgar’s corner of Huila has to offer.