Cuba – the mere name conjures up exotic associations with cigars, rum, cocktails, vintage cars, that incomparable yellowed charm and, of course, the music of this island. The Buena Vista Social Club is just one of the more prominent examples of this.

Due to decades of isolation and communism with all the economic consequences of a planned economy, this island has far more potential than real opportunities – and this is especially true for coffee. I still remember my first coffee from Cuba – even back in 2000, Cuba had this unique nostalgic attitude to life and far less quality coffee than was already in demand at the time. With every sack of coffee, the Cubans also sold a piece of this image. The ‘Turquino’ tasted of tobacco and raisins – whether this was due to my expectations or not – and had distinct nutty notes. A very well-rounded, pleasant coffee. The very first subsequent delivery revealed a completely different coffee – flat, bland and disappointing – and the realisation that good Cuban coffee was not so easy to obtain and was subject to significant fluctuations in quality.

The first coffee plant was brought to Cuba in 1748 by José Antonio Gelabert. He established a plantation in Wajay on the outskirts of Havana. His plants originated from Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic) and are therefore among the oldest cultivated Typica varieties in the world. In 1791, coffee cultivation experienced an upswing due to French colonists who fled the Haitian Revolution and brought better production methods and coffee plants to Cuba. The main growing areas were in Santiago de Cuba, Las Villas, Candelaria and Las Terrazas in Pinar del Rio. The growing areas in eastern Cuba, which were shaped by coffee cultivation in the 19th and 20th centuries, have been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2000 as ‘unique cultural landscapes shaped by coffee cultivation’. This includes 171 coffee plantations or ‘cafetales’, as well as the irrigation infrastructure, the entire transport network of mountain roads and bridges covering a total area of 81,475 hectares, stretching across the administrative districts of Guantanamo and Santiago de Cuba. In the midst of this unique area, in addition to the ‘La Isabelica’ museum, the ‘Ti Alba Farm’ house and the ‘San Juan de Escoia’ garden, there are numerous ruins of former plantations, with the houses of the former owners, drying yards, processing facilities and workers' quarters.

French settlers (mostly with roots in the Basque Country) introduced ‘wet processing’ to this area, as evidenced by numerous hydraulic structures, cisterns, aqueducts and fermentation tanks. In the 18th and 19th centuries, they cultivated coffee there under shade trees, which were integrated into the natural flora from naturally growing forest trees and specifically planted fruit and ornamental trees. This integration of agriculture into primary forest is considered a testament to an era whose traces have otherwise largely disappeared worldwide. It was only through the abandonment of coffee cultivation in the early 20th century – due to political unrest against the French settlers and the simultaneous rise of sugar cane cultivation – that this unique structure was preserved, as traditional cultivation methods were no longer competitive with the more modern production methods that had become prevalent in other Latin American countries. At the height of coffee production, Cuba exported around 330,000 sacks (60 kg) of coffee, mostly to Europe, especially Germany and the Netherlands. Due to the Cuban Revolution of 1959, coffee production declined dramatically, leading Cuban coffee producers to add roasted peas to their coffee in order to be able to offer sufficient quantities at all.