*Maracaibos are the name for coffee beans from the Andean region of Venezuela (Merida, Tachira, Trujillo etc) and are named after the port of Maracaibo in the city from which they are historically exported from.
The summer of 2023 is when our hunt for Venezuelan beans here in the UK started…and ended. At first, just to see the state of play, we looked in shops and supermarkets to see what the larger commercial options were. Nothing. We looked then to specialty coffee shops and eventually roasters across the country who were importing and serving everything from Ethiopian Yirgacheffe to Jamaican Blue Mountain. Nothing. To say we were at a loss would be an understatement.
I was first introduced to a green bean importer who predominantly dealt with Ethiopian beans; Michael. Through him, we began to understand the process a little better and some of the hoops that had to be jumped through in order to get any green beans into the country which was helpful, however ultimately, beans from East Africa were his game and so we continued our search (although if you see us throw in an Ethiopian Guest bean in the next few months, chances are we sourced it from this gentleman!)
Its from this, we learnt we had to begin speaking to either solely Venezuelan / Latin American coffee entrepreneurs or at the very least, more global players. As there was nobody linked within the UK, we reached out to a specialist coffee roaster in Madrid who were affiliated with a farm in the Andes – Only after speaking to them however did we discover that due to their own issues with importation due to the current situation in the country, they had actually closed up shop and relocated back to Venezuela to continue doing business. Another dead end.
We are no strangers to the current political situation in Venezuela, due to one half of us being a proud chama! But we were at a loss, and so some more research was necessary, as well as some direct links at the source. Its worth noting at this point, we pretty much went straight to the research as every attempt at contacting a farm or a roaster was either ignored or met with some blunt hostility… especially and more understandably so when I had contacted a few in English. I’m not sure what I was expecting really!
Pulling back the curtain a little, the situation had worsened more than we had realised. Not just the coffee but the agricultural industry was facing tremendous challenges – now for those outside the country, that doesn’t mean a lot – unless of course you want to bring any goods with you. Up until the late 1990’s Venezuela was the number 2 exporter of coffee worldwide, but for the last 20 years, those international exports have reduced to barely 1%. Over that period, naturally businesses became fearful of further change and disruption, which explained why no farms wanted to speak to two random strangers who had contacted them over the internet…
We spoke to a coffee ambassador of one of the largest green bean importers in Asia, who happened to be a native Venezuelan, but even they confirmed the situation had become too complicated to export beans out of the country or maintain consistent relationships with businesses within.
And then just like that, we were thrown a very dodgy lifeline.
I received an email from ‘G’…