San Agustin, a pre-Colombian civilisation that flourishes in the mountains where the Magdalena River is born, is the home to the Imbachi family.

Before being a coffee producer, Carlos Imbachi worked as a treasure hunter! He used to look for artefacts left by the native indigenous in San Agustin and sold them to collectors.

With the money he earned from doing this, he constructed a house in the vereda La Argentina with his family. In his new house, he started to grow coffee and other farm products. At first, he just picked the coffee, depulped it, washed it and sold it wet

At this stage, coffee wasn’t profitable for him: the money he received could only pay the workers with nothing left over for him.

As the years passed, he started drying his coffee on his farm, but he didn’t focus hugely on quality until he met Caravela (our sourcing partner for this coffee) almost ten years ago.

The Caravela team visited his farm and Carlos Imbachi began to change how he thought about about coffee. He realized that coffee did have a way of being profitable but it would involve improving his harvest and post-harvest practices.

After years of working hard to improve his processes and experimenting, Carlos has become an exceptional specialty coffee producer. He learned that by producing higher quality coffee he could make more money.

Carlos lives with his wife and his two youngest sons. Sonia, their oldest daughter is married and lives close to her father’s farm on her own coffee farm, continuing Carlos’ legacy.

Didier, Carlos’ oldest son chose to take the path of cupping and is currently the Quality Assurance Coordinator at Caravela.

Carlos’ coffee was awarded Coffee of the Year by the SCAA in 2009.