on Jairo Quiñones

July 23: Summit Series II

For Summit, the very notion of relationship coffee starts with Jairo Quinones. In February 2016, on the same Sunday when the Denver Broncos beat our hometown Carolina Panthers in the Super Bowl, I was a continent away hugging a Colombian farmer we'd just given a life-changing amount of money to. I was sitting alongside Evan, our longtime Director of Coffee at the time. We were somewhere between 2 and 11 drinks deep when we raised our hands, again and again, in a bidding war at auction for Jairo's top lot of coffee.

Back then, we were some 9 months into roasting, and somehow got selected to be jurors at the Best of Colombia coffee competition, and then somehow found ourselves in a bidding war in a language we barely spoke, in a country we didn't know, for a coffee we had tasted only twice. Prior to that rainy, sweaty day at an outdoor mall in Pitalito, Colombia, Jairo had only ever sold his coffee to a cooperative for less than US$1.00/pound, at which point it was blended with hundreds of other farms and sold as a regional crop. But thanks to our partner Cafe Imports, the top 30 coffees in Colombia were pulled aside so roasters like us, in countries like the U.S. and Sweden and South Korea, could pay whatever we want directly to the producers for the opportunity to (re)sell their coffee. On that Sunday, Evan and I agreed to buy Jairo's coffee for $5.50/pound, a 550% increase over his previous harvest. He danced and jumped and slumped over and cried a little, hugged his family and hugged us and hugged strangers. All we did was write a check for $6,000, yet it was the start of a new chapter for Jairo's life as a coffee producer, and the start of Summit's earnest journey into relationship coffee.

Jairo's a second-generation coffee farmer, and in the decade-plus he's been harvesting coffee, he's reinvested all his earnings into improvements on his farm, toward opportunities to learn, and into his family's wellbeing. When Evan was back in Colombia in 2019, Jairo was wearing a Summit Coffee t-shirt (the notion of that never gets old) and he shared that he's invested the money we paid three years earlier into a motorcycle, into reliable transportation. For those who've been following the Summit x Jairo story these past 7 years, you may remember that during that 2019 visit we learned that Jairo's microlot -- the very one we purchased in 2016 -- had been selected as THE best in Colombia. A coffee roaster in Singapore outbid us for Jairo's coffee to the tune of $31/pound, a breathtaking amount of money in coffee that Jairo had earned.

All this is to say, Jairo's microlot is back and exclusively available through Summit. There's so much to love about this story: the cinematic blossoming of Jairo's coffee career; Summit's fortuitous trip to a Pitalito mall that brought us together; and the notion that it's such a good coffee. Jairo's coffee is the first that made me prefer Colombian coffee to all others, a gross generalization to be sure but it's the truth. A cup of Jairo's microlot, from his Finca Nueva Zelandia farm, is everything that I want out of coffee -- it's intensely sweet, its flavors are distinct and clear, the mouthfeel is round and clean.

There was so much we had yet to learn that February in 2016. But we understood great coffee, and we recognized the impact of relationship coffee for everyone involved. And that moment in 2019, when Jairo walked in to accept his award (and check) for producing Colombia's best coffee while wearing a Summit Coffee shirt, is about as beautiful a microcosm for what we're trying to do in business as anything else we can remember.

We're big believers that food and drink provide an opportunity to connect people, that no matter our differences we can break bread or share a glass and mutually appreciate something that's truly great. Grab a bag, or a cup, and share this story with some friends.