Finca La Victoria 1892

After a bumpy but exciting ride up into the Sierra Nevada mountain range, the track brings us to hacienda La Victoria, a coffe farm founded in 1892 by a Anglo German family.

Hidden in the hills above the Caribbean coast of Colombia lies a pocket of coffee plantations, tucked into the dry tropical forests that blanket the region. One of the farms,

La Victoria Coffee Company, takes advantage of the streams that flow generously down the mountain slopes and uses the water to run nearly its entire production process. The plantation still uses most of the same methods and equipment that it has since it was founded in the late 1800s, but the coffee it produces today could end up in your decidedly 21st-century Nespresso machine

While the bulk of Colombian coffee is cultivated further inland in the hills around Medellín, a significant crop does come from the Sierra Nevada mountains near the sea. These beans, which endure drier weather and higher temperatures than the coffee in the rest of the country, are known for creating a full-bodied drink with lower acidity levels.

The oldest of the plantations in the Caribbean region, La Victoria was founded in 1892 by a multinational group of families, but the bulk of the investment came from a British couple, explaining the queenly name. The farm uses water to power a Rube Goldberg-like collection of pipes to bring the coffee berries in from the fields, sort them, and move them between the different stages of production. The business even generates its own electricity using a miniature water wheel.

This is such an interesting and unique expierience for me i am going to have to cover it in more detail in another post.