Café del Mural: A Unique Cartagena Coffee Tasting Experience

Colombia is well known for its coffee.

Due to it unique geography and climate, its one of the largest producers in the world.

Unfortunately, Cartagena’s flat, coastal geography is not so conducive to coffee production. So, you can’t visit any coffee farms without heading up the coast or into the interior.

However, you can certainly still enjoy some great coffee, and there are a handful of places that offer tastings that are the closest thing you’ll get to a Cartagena coffee tour.

One of those is the Café del Mural. I did their Cartagena coffee tasting and workshop on our visit to Cartagena in mid-2024.

It was a really neat and unique experience, and I definitely recommend it for those who want to do a coffee tasting that’s a bit different than your average one.

Read on to learn all about my experience at the Café del Mural in Cartagena.

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About Café del Mural

I have a confession to make: I had never been to Café del Mural.

It opened in 2015, so it was there for 7 of my 11 years living in Cartagena. I guess, to be honest, I tend to just make my coffee at home and don’t have coffee out too often.

That’s not to mention, when I found myself in Getsemaní while I was actually living in Cartagena, it was usually in the evening, and I was usually looking for a different kind of drink.

I do remember going by here one time because I had heard good things about it, but found it didn’t open until 3 in the afternoon, and thought that was a bit quirky for a coffee shop.

I did love the pretty storefront complete with the bicycle in front, and I definitely snapped a photo of it.

I would hazard a guess that this is the prettiest and most photographed coffee shop in Cartagena.

The murals across the street where they have some outdoor tables are also nice, and there are several others along this street.

Those and the street art galleries further up make this one of the must see streets when exploring Getsemaní.

Before coming for a return visit to Cartagena during the summer of 2024, I had seen the coffee tasting and workshop at Café del Mural recommended a few places and added it to the things I wanted to do that I hadn’t done before.

As I discovered when finally checking it out for myself on this visit, there’s quite a few quirky things about Café del Mural.

That starts with its owner David Arzayus.

David has an engineering background and uses his scientific knowledge to inform how he brews his coffee, and it’s hard to miss the sign that identifies Café del Mural’s kitchen as the laboratorio de café, or the coffee laboratory.

The cafe’s website describes him as a reincarnation of Walter White, a sort of mad scientist of coffee.

Or should it be a coffee mad scientist?

The whole cafe has a neat lived in feel, from the coffee roaster covered in bumper stickers, to the old posters and signs, to the antiques that range from old cameras to old telephones to, of course, old coffee grinders and makers.

The empty liquor bottles thrown in for good measure give it a bit of a college vibe or a suggest David might have a tad of Rick Sanchez in him too.

It is without a doubt a quirky place, but also one that has an unmistakable character.

My Coffee Tasting and Workshop

I reached out to Café del Mural directly, and they were able to fit me into another previously planned workshop a few days later.

You can also book the coffee workshop at Café del Mural online via Viator.

The workshops are generally held in the morning or early afternoon before the cafe opens to the public.

I had previously done a more traditional sort of mini-tasting at the Café San Alberto in Cartagena, home of Colombia’s most award winning coffee. It was nice (and they do offer larger, more in-depth tastings for groups if you’re looking for something closer to a standard coffee tasting in Cartagena).

However, I had a feeling I was in for a more unique experience at Café del Mural once I walked in the door and saw the place’s eclectic character.

That was certainly the case, and while I’d recommend a visit to San Alberto or perhaps the other well regarded Libertario Coffee Roasters for a cup, Café del Mural’s workshop was absolutely worth doing.

My experience at Café del Mural started with myself and the other participants making ourselves cozy, and comfortable if a tad cramped at the little bar overlooking the kitchen, or laboratorio to be more precise, where David and his lovely assistant Nicole would be making the magic happen.

David began with a short introduction to the history of coffee production in Colombia. He explained the process of the cultivation and harvest of coffee in Colombia from seed to cup.

This explanation included the origin of Juan Valdez as a marketing symbol and the effects of various price booms and busts.

He also explained how Colombia’s mountainous geography and climate combine to make large swaths of the country the perfect place to cultivate Arabica coffee, prized for its smoother taste compared to Robusta coffee.

Almost immediately, we got our first taste of coffee too, prepared abuela style using cute tiny cloth filters in the style of the larger cloth filters used in homes all over Colombia and often referred to as medias or socks.

It was served up in a traditional cup made from totumo gourd in perfect campesino style.

David also explained and showed us many traditional spices and flavors used in Colombia, including anisse, used to flavor aguardiente, and panela, the unrefined sugarcane he had us sample with this traditional preparation.

I pretty much always drink my coffee black, but I do have a bit of a soft spot for occasionally adding a pinch of panela, campesino style.

While David gave a good background on the cultivation, harvest, and production process, the workshop now turned to its main thrust: coffee roasting and preparation techniques.

He began, in perfect quirky mad scientist style, by taking a blow torch to some coffee beans, allowing us to see, smell, and hear the snap, crackle, pop of the chemical changes that take place as the beans become progressively darker.

He then explained how the roasting process leads to losses of final product by up to 20% and how some unscrupulous roasters and mass produced coffee will add sugar for color and even corn for bulk during the roasting process to limit their losses and mask their use of lower quality beans.

This echoed what I had learned at what, in my opinion, is the most informative coffee farm tour I’ve done at La Victoria in the mountain town of Minca, one of my favorite other destinations on the Caribbean coast about 5 hours away from Cartagena.

Like so many other industries, the coffee industry’s mass producers take plenty of shortcuts and you do get what you pay for, at least to some extent.

Something I’ve always found interesting is even though Colombia is world famous for its coffee, most Colombians drink instant coffee or cheap, low quality coffee, often served up by street vendors carrying around thermoses.

Also side note word to the wise: don’t buy the cheap Sello Rojo coffee from souvenir shops packaged in those cute burlap sacks. It’s not a great gift!

We continued our tasting by progressing from light roast to dark roast, with David explaining the history and origin of each, along with an explanation of different methods of preparation.

I liked the hands on approach, letting us see and smell each coffee as he pointed out the differences.

Most importantly, we got to try each roast and method after learning about them.

I really enjoy coffee, but don’t consider myself particularly picky. I do prefer darker roasts and coffees with a chocolatey aroma, and I do prefer not to drink instant or gas station coffee.

However, I have been known to enjoy a tinto on the streets of Cartagena, perhaps with a loosie, every now and then.

I did really enjoy the differences between different roasts and preparation styles when trying them together like this.

I’ll say that, perhaps appropriately for a scientist, the operation is a pretty well oiled machine.

I thought Nicole was impressive having the different coffees ready for us to sample on cue as David progressed through his explanations.

She was hard at work the whole time to keep up with David, who is a fast talker, perhaps what you’d expect from a true coffee lover.

If he’s the Walter White of coffee, I’d definitely say he gets high on his own supply. It’s clear he’s passionate about what he does.

So, you definitely want to try avoiding taking a bathroom break or letting your mind wander too much as David drops a lot of knowledge.

Luckily, there’s plenty of coffee to keep you focused!

I want to say we had 6 cups of coffee in all.

Besides the wealth of knowledge, I also appreciated the many music and pop culture references, David’s humor, and the occasional lightly veiled satirical historic and social commentary he mixed in.

I definitely learned something, and I definitely had a few chuckles.

Oh, and I loved all the coffee too!

Another thing I appreciated about David is that he is that rare breed that is a purist without being a snob.

He repeated a number of times that you have to find the best coffee for you and even mentioned that he’s found his perfect coffee of the moment includes a bit powdered creamer, not typically associated with the high class coffee connoisseur.

I guess that really just embodies the come one, come all non-pretentious vibe David has created at Café del Mural, well, at least as long as you don’t come asking for instant coffee or hating on AC/DC.

Our tasting at Café del Mural concluded with a chance to pick out a bag of coffee to take home with us.

All of them have creative names that evoke their style. Some of these names included Acid Jazz, Dark Soul, and Sweet Dreams.

They ranged from light to dark roast, with some, like the one I chose, named Dark Side, blended from different roasts.

For each, David gave a short explanation of the style and the best method to prepare them, so you don’t have to choose based solely on which has the coolest name.

However, if you’re like me, it’ll at least be a factor.

Want to Do a Cartagena Coffee Tasting at Café del Mural Yourself?

David regularly runs the coffee workshops in the mornings and occasionally the early afternoons before Café del Mural opens.

I definitely recommend it as one of the more interesting coffee tastings in Cartagena and Colombia and really one of the more unique things you can do in Cartagena period.

You can book online here, but word to the wise, I got a better price reaching out to them directly via Whatsapp, although I did have to wait a couple days until they could fit me in to a group.

You can check out their website and their Instagram page too.

Of course, you can always just stop by Café del Mural during their regular hours from 3 pm to 8 pm Monday to Saturday.

My mom and I stopped back by when she was visiting, and I found their menu to be quite extensive, not to mention complete with that quirky character, along with some unique concoctions befitting of a mad scientist.

Oh, and David happened to be working on his old motorcycle that day.

So, I got a bit of a unique photo of the cafe without the usual bicycle out front but his old school moto.

Whether you come for a tasting and workshop or just stop by for a fancy latte, an iced coffee, a quirky concoction, a cocktail, a simple, non-instant tinto, or maybe a bag of coffee a tad better than Sello Rojo to take home as a gift, I definitely recommend checking out Café del Mural in Cartagena yourself.