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In the town of Harding, north of the Andes, there are about twenty coffee restaurants and cafes in the vibrant square. I chose one, sat down at the light blue table by the side of the road and ordered a cup of cafe é tinto ─, or black coffee. A glass of eight hundred pesos is about twenty-five cents.

Coffee is the focus of the town, the economy of the place, and the cultural identity of the whole people.

When the coffee was served, a rich and mellow smell directly from the beans came to my nostrils. I took a sip and found that no one used the accompanying cup or paper cup around me, because no one would bring coffee away, so everyone sat down to enjoy it.

Harding is located in the coffee-producing area of the southwestern province of Antioquia, which has the highest coffee production in Colombia. Is there a better place to indulge in coffee?

If you say you want to come to Colombia, I'm afraid you'll hear all kinds of warnings. Over the past few decades, the leftist "Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces" have raised funds for kidnapping, ransom and drug trafficking against the government, resulting in bloody conflicts in the country. But travel to Colombia is no longer as dangerous as it used to be when the government signed a peace agreement with the rebels in ○ in 2016.

In the 1990s, when the price of coffee fell, the Colombian economy was hit hard and thousands of families in coffee-producing areas were plunged into poverty. In order to revive the economy, the Colombian government encourages coffee farmers to grow high-priced boutique coffee, and most of the coffee beans from the Harding Coffee Cooperative are now sold to the Swiss coffee maker Nespresso.

I hired a guide to show me the source of this cup of mellow fragrance. Hernandez, 41, drove to the square to pick me up. After passing the military checkpoint outside town, the car drove along the scenic path to the foothills to rendezvous with another guide who prepared the horses.

A few hours later, the three of us rode to the coffee farm 1800 meters above sea level. The so-called manor is just a simple farmhouse near the top of the hill. We first had lunch on the patio. After the meal, a woman poured me a cup of signature coffee. This cup of coffee with the fragrance of the earth made me raise the corners of my mouth.

Then the manager, Ma Lin, took me across the dirt road to the coffee garden. The coffee trees are fruitful, the green fruits are not yet ripe, and the red berries that look like cranberries are ripe and had better be harvested immediately. During the harvest season, Marin can harvest up to 230 kilograms of fruit a day, and Nespresso rates his beans as AAA, the highest level of quality and sustainability.

Marlin says his coffee beans benefit from three conditions: altitude (less insect pests), humidity (swirling mountain haze) and fertile red soil (from volcanoes in the northern Andes).

On the way back to Harding, Hernandez, the son of a coffee farmer, told me that in his seven years as a guide, I was the second tourist to visit the coffee garden, and the rest of the guests were bird watchers. He hopes that there will be more opportunities to introduce visitors to this historic coffee garden in the future.

Hernandez took me back to the hostel for lunch break and picked me up at six o'clock in the evening to have dinner at another hillside manor.

As we approached the manor gate, a couple with a pair of young children rushed out to greet me, the first North American to visit their house in ─ (of course, the Swiss coffee merchant came, too).

Anhe is 37 years old, and it seems a little young to run a coffee farm at this age. The manor originally belonged to a priest, but because of Anhe's hard work and enterprising attitude, the priest was moved and sold the land to him. At the dinner table, Anhe told me that his farm was certified by the Rainforest Alliance and his coffee beans were rated as professional.

After dinner, Anhe's wife came to clean up the dishes. I asked her to let me follow up on the kitchen to see how she prepared the after-dinner coffee.

In the Colombian farmhouse, making coffee is a simple daily job. First, she put a liter of water on the gas stove and heated it to a boiling temperature (bubbles began to appear at the bottom of the pot), then put five tablespoons of home-made coffee powder into the pot and stirred it, then turned off the heat and let the coffee powder soak for five minutes. She also washed four cups with hot water to prevent the instant temperature change from affecting the coffee flavor when the hot coffee was poured into the cup. Finally, she used a small strainer to filter and pour the coffee into the cup.

The wonderful night ended with the charming aroma of coffee. As I walked into the night, Mr. and Mrs. Anhe and their children waved goodbye to me on the porch. I saw the white glow of stars in the dark forest, like spray. When it was not dark, and the forest was thick, I could not see the scene behind the woods, so now I realized that the stars were the porch lights of the adjacent manor, and a lamp represented a family like Anhe.

This night scene tells me one thing: coffee is a family affair here. Relax, taste carefully, you will taste their seriousness, their painstaking efforts.

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