I think when good people are faced with a challenge, they adapt in ways you don’t expect. We were a group of bartenders with no construction skills, but we managed to build a farm from the foundations up and live off the land.”

Back in 2020 at the breakout of the pandemic, Jean Trinh, founder of cocktail bar Alquímico in Colombia’s Cartagena, presented his staff with an ultimatum.

“Without the bar being open there was no way I could keep paying everyone. We had a video call and some of the team were in tears because their salary supported not just themselves, but their families too,” says Trinh.

“Instead of closing the doors and moving on, I gave them another option. We had a farm in Filandia which we bought in 2018 and I said if they give up their apartments in Cartagena, they can come and live on the farm with me.”

Filandia is an hour’s drive south from Pereira, which is a 90-minute flight south of Cartagena. The farm was merely the shell of a stable at the time, but with the help of a builder and an architect, a team of 20 bartenders swapped mixing drinks for laying bricks.

Over the subsequent months they learned how to build, farm, cultivate and thrive in a new environment.

“We were cut off from WiFi, we had to live vegetarian for a few months, and we learned a lot about each other – more than you would just working at a bar. The land itself used to be a coffee farm, which dominated the Colombia agriculture, so we wanted to diversify as much as possible.”

Today the farm has more than 200 varieties of organic plants across its 11ha while also producing its own fruit and vegetables, cheese, honey, eggs, chillies and herbs.

With the pandemic behind them, the bartenders returned to Cartagena and so did the new production line. Ingredients are now transported from Filandia to Cartagena and used in the drinks at Alquímico. As well as cocktails, the honey forms part of a fruit mead programme which replaces wine in the bar while all of the food offering is vegetarian.

Research space

T he bar itself is a three-story colonial townhouse in the centre of old Cartagena. It averages 900-1,500 guests a night, seven days a week, and despite each cocktail costing just $7, every guest spends around $20 on average. One street down from Alquímico is another plot for office space, a stock room and laboratory where the farm’s produce is processed and research for its mead and cocktail development take place.

“The average cocktail in Cartagena is around $10 and at Alquímico it’s $7. We also have industry nights on Mondays where this comes down further,” adds Trinh. “We’ve been open almost 10 years now and everyone always says I should open another bar. But I don’t want to. I want my bartenders to open their own and then I can help them out.”

Across the farm, office, laboratory and the bar, Alquímico employs a 100-strong workforce who are all given the chance to learn English and access private healthcare for themselves and another family member, while being paid a healthy salary. Miguel Mora is one of the 100, but he’s not paid to make drinks – his role is project manager for the bar, specifically to research and develop partnerships with local charities.

“In Colombia there are lots of ways we can help people, you just need to spend time understanding how,” says Mora. “Jean (Trinh) has a unique way of thinking, he always puts people first and you can see the long-term positive effects it has on the community.”

Asocoman is the biggest project supported by Alquímico, aiming to support farmers in sustainably diversifying their produce. Alquímico’s Comunidad cocktail menu provides financial support in the development of infrastructure for the farmers of Asocoman, specifically developing clean and reliable water storage solutions. Mora has also set up partnerships with local music schools, which provide instruments for children from poor backgrounds and the opportunity to perform in a local orchestra.

“We’re trying to be more than just a cocktail bar,” adds Mora. “The goal is to grow Cartagena and Colombia as one.” On paper these words could come across clichéd, but having experienced the impact one bar is having in so many different parts of the country, they carry meaning. What makes Trinh’s Alquímico story truly inspiring is he not only navigated the pandemic through extreme adversity but raised everyone around him as they thrived.