Hobbies and travel

Music is my passion: 

This is an album about Colombian classical music (2007) - those times when I played the oboe, a hobby that I combined with geology when I was young.

(1st oboist)


     Other songs on the album about Colombian music (2007)
               

Travel:

Los viajes son los viajeros. Lo que vemos no es lo que vemos, sino lo que somos." - Franz Kafka.                                                    













                                                                   







International Congress of Music - Medellín, Colombia (2010)

(1st oboist)

Last but not least: coffee is also my passion

Why choose specialty coffees instead of regular?☕
What is a special coffee?

It is a coffee with a high quality in the cup, objectively and methodically defined, with a taster score of at least 84 points, and also with a complete traceability to the origin of the lot or coffee fruit.

The coffees with a high score, are characterized because: (1) they are very clean, have a balance between sweetness and acidity, and (2) they are incredibly aromatically complex.

Species and varieties of coffee

In general, the "Arabica" species gives a better cup quality, whereas the "Canephora" or "Robusta" is more productive and more resistant to pests. However, the former has a lower cup quality. For this reason it is important to treat the Arabica varieties, when a special coffees needs to be addressed.

The most important coffees within the Arabica varieties are divided into two: (i) "pure", and (ii) "hybrid". The pure ones are varieties that have not been genetically mixed, and that have only changed over time through natural mutations (bearing in mind that Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee, and that it is found there in its natural wild state).

Among the several "pure" varieties of Arabica, I recommend the following:
  • TYPICAL: It is the first variety that left Ethiopia more than 400 years ago. It is the parent of most of the special varieties of the typical Arabica subclass.
  • BOURBON: Derived from a  natural mutationof "typical", which occurred in the Bourbon Islands in East Africa.
  • GESHA: It is native to the Gesha region of Ethiopia. A mission of scientists collected it in the 1960s, and together with other plants from different parts of the world, they took it to research centers in Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Madagascar. Coffees of this variety are some of the most exclusive and expensive in the world.
  • CATURRA: It originated from a spontaneous mutation observed for the first time in the State of Minas Gerais (Brazil), in a Bourbon plantation.
  • COLOMBIA: After September 27, 1983, when the coffee plague called "roya" arrived to Colombia, the Colombian coffee research center "Cenicafé" dedicated itself to crossing coffee species that were resistant to said plague but without losing their aromatic attributes of the arabica variety. The crosses were between a Timor hybrid with Bourbon, Caturra and Typical. (hybrid variety).