Unfortunately, the sensory high soon turns into a full-blown crash. My hands begin to tremble, and I fumble my pen and grope around the floor for it, sweat dripping onto the carpet. I am like a drunk at a wine tasting, and the coffee chicas shake their heads. Yet another gringo has descended into a xanthine-alkaloid-induced mania. “Any problem?” asks Yunson Lee, a judge from South Korea. I shake my head. “Put your shoes on,” Liebergall says. “It may be having a negative effect on the jury.” Bigwigs from Fedecafé have arrived for the gala awards ceremony this evening, along with a cornucopia of government officials and a phalanx of press. But the main attraction is the growers, who have descended from the Cordilleras freshly shaven and permanently sunburned. The scores of entrants wear neatly pressed black slacks, white button-downs, red scarves, and straw hats. One of them is too típico to be true: He sits with tremendous aplomb, poker face shaded by an enormous sombrero and a fabulous handlebar mustache. No doubt his burro stands in the parking lot, piled high with handpicked sacks of bean. Half a century ago, the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach created the Colombian ur-peasant, Juan Valdez, icon of Colombian coffee — and here, at long last, appears the incarnation. After endless speeches from the politicos and an even longer session of cumbia — traditional music of Colombia’s Caribbean coast — it’s time
to announce the Cup of Excellence grand-prize winner. Of course, the winning coffee turns out to have been submitted by the Juan Valdez doppelgänger. His name is Arnulfo Leguizamo, and his beans possess the acidity of passion fruit marked by splendid notes of apricot, lemongrass, jasmine, and tamarind. The liquor has a creamy, lingering, caramel flavor mellowed by hints of wild honey — and brings home a whopping score of 94.05. I manage to push my way through the scrum that immediately encloses the champion grower, who is being pestered by Japanese buyers, European roasters, and scads of photo-op-seeking coffee chicas. But in the great tradition of Hollywood producers who find themselves in possession of an Oscar, Señor Leguizamo’s first priority is his cell phone. Everyone else has to wait. Even the chicas. When I finally get the champ’s attention, I ask what will he do with all that dinero heading his way, and he looks over the teeming crowd, eyes moist with emotion. Perhaps he is recalling how, high in the mountains of Teruel, he harvested his Caturra, washed the cherries with cool spring water, and dried them in the sun, as did his father, as did the ancients. “Thank God and the Virgin Mary,” Leguizamo says. “Now I can pay my debts.” And what about a repeat performance? The peasant has no comment, but a few weeks later word comes that Arnulfo Leguizamo is nurturing a different kind of coffee tree on the finca this year, something special from the techs at Fedecafé: a variety called Castillo.
www.wired.com/magazine/2011/06/ff_cupofexcellence/all/1