To start my blog I have decided to use the foreword of my book which says what I feel about the coffee life I am deeply involved in.

Another point I wish to share is my passion for photography and travel.

Like the Coffee Journal, it will show the places I have been to in search for great finds and more than the unusual stuff on coffee. You see the are the usual stories and there are the really unusual stories.

In the series of articles to come, I would like to share my experience and anthrophotojournalistic (if there is such a word) stories and gossips ( you wish!!!)

Well here it is I welcome you.

My life with coffee started 15 years ago. Thirteen of those years have been spent on purchasing, roasting, blending and selling coffee to cafes, restaurants and hotels. It all began in my mother’s garage and the first photo to document my coffee business is that of my roaster. To this day, those photos hang on my office wall.

 

In every trip to a farm or to see a client, I would take snapshots of anything related to coffee, and before I knew it I had amassed a huge number of photos. Of course there were the requisite shots of coffee machine installations, training sessions, conventions and seminars. These comprised the bulk of the photos I took. In the midst of that stack of photos and as I went on with my coffee journeys, I realized that I had something more valuable and far more interesting to show than those typical remembrances of seminars. These are photos of which on their own t

ell a story, and, when brought together to form a continuous flow, become a complete visual narrative of coffee life in the Philippines. From there, and as I went on with my coffee journeys, the idea of a book started to brew in my mind.

 

My laboratory, showroom and company factory store located in the office warehouse provided me a more pressing reason to come up with a book. You see, on the walls of this room hung a series of black and white photos that trace the route of coffee from flowering to the cup. These photos inevitably elicit curiosity from my clients and the others who see them and prompt them to ask questions, the answers to which I would readily supply.

 

By looking at the photo sequence and with a little explanation, people learn about the stages of coffee making, and other fascinating stories connected to the coffee. So one day, I thought of sharing this story about coffee with an audience bigger than those in the regular coffee seminars and lectures that I conduct.

 

And so began my deeper search for information on coffee in the Philippines to add to the knowledge I had already accumulated the past years. I started to write down all the information related to coffee, from seed to cup, which I could gather in all the places I visited. I also decided to look into how coffee in the country was in the past.

 

The research brought me to a sad realization that there are few existing documents on the history of coffee in the Philippines. I read a short article about Franciscan friars who came to the Philippines in 1740 and planted a few gantas of coffee seeds in Batangas. I also read that the Philippines was one of the first countries in Asia who supplied coffee to Europe and that for a short period 1880’s the Philippines had the monopoly of the market because a virus known as coffee rust swept across Asia and wiped out practically all the coffee farms in its wake. The Philippines was spared for some time but eventually the virus reached the islands and the coffee trees succumbed to the disease.

 

All we have to show of the past centuries in the life and times of Philippine coffee is condensed in a few paragraphs. This unfortunate revelation sealed my resolve to go ahead, compile and share what I know about coffee today so that the coffee culture of today does not suffer the same fate as that of the past.

 

While documenting the present, I decided to dig into the elusive history of the past by searching for living persons, as elderly as possible who might be able to recount for me what coffee was during their earlier years. Many can no longer even trace the beginning of some terms related to coffee. Some have vague ideas on how their family got into coffee. In many instances, it was easy to substitute facts with speculations and theories, which behooved me to try even harder, and go farther before the remaining coffee traditions are left unrecorded and disappear altogether.

  

This Journal turned out to be an array of the fundamental knowledge about coffee as told to me by the farmers, the harvesters, the roasters, the traders, the retailers, and of course, the coffee drinkers. It is a photo excursion to the varied subcultures and traditions of the coffee provinces I have visited. It is a tribute to the individuals involved in every stage of coffee making whose hard work and innovation make it possible for us to enjoy a cup of coffee.

From the beginning until halfway through the end, the manifold of reasons to complete this book presented themselves. Not the least of those reasons is my sincere hope that we can finally showcase our very own coffee culture, or that hopefully we will begin to bridge the gap between our incomplete past and our abundant present; or that we will have a solid material to guide us through a better appreciation of the coffee experience. With multinationals in coffee rapidly inching their way into the Filipino lifestyle particularly in the urban areas, I felt the need to highlight the story of Philippine coffee even more.

 

 

A Coffee Journal, as I call this book, documents the coffee story from coffee seedling to the beverage we drink today. In every stage or segment of the coffee production, the journal will show places from north to south and the similarities or differences in their processing of coffee. Featured in this book are selected individuals and farmers from the Mountain Province, Cavite, Lipa, Mindoro, Negros and Miarayon, Bukidnon. I have also included some snippets of the history of coffee to show how coffee has been a part of Philippine life from centuries past.

 

I wish that in the near future, someone else will pick up where I leave off, fill in the missing links in the story of coffee in our country, and enhance our attempts to preserve our coffee culture. I also hope that this book reaches other lands across the seas and earn for the Philippines the recognition it deserves for its rich coffee culture and its role as a market player in the world of coffee, however far behind it has now trailed.

 

Here then, is my very personal experience of the Philippine coffee culture from the north to the south, from the farm to the cup, from me to you. 

Roberto Francisco

Books are available at Boyds Coffee, Fully Booked, Filipinas Heritage Library, Museum Cafe library, Lopez Museum. 

Call 746-CAFE or 746-BOYD