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In the cup: Soft, sweet and beautifully balanced. The taste is like an ice-cream made up of ripe pears and milk chocolate with a slice of slightly acidic peach. There's a gorgeous nectar-like florality permeating the brew that reminds us of the scent of coffee blossoms and jasmine.
SCA score: 87
Mouthfeel: Layered, silky
Variety: Bourbon
Process: Fully washed and twice fermented
Producer: Teresa Bobadilla / Finca Churupampa
Altitude: 2000 m.a.s.l.
Region: Cajamarca
Background:
Teresa Bobadilla, the producer of this lot, and her family are known for producing exceptional coffee in the Pariamarca area. As active members of Finca Churupampa, they focus on cultivating high-quality varieties like Bourbon and Caturra, thanks to their farm's ideal elevation and microclimate.
Teresa Bobadilla learned fermentation techniques alongside the technical team at Finca Churupampa, which regularly visits producers who wish to improve their coffee quality through processing methods. Thanks to the variety and altitude of her farm, her coffees have achieved an excellent standard. For this particular lot, she applied a double fermentation process: 36 hours in cherry and an additional 24 hours after pulping, totaling 60 hours of fermentation, which gives this lot its distinctive flavor notes.
Peru holds exceptional promise as a producer of high-quality coffees. The country is the largest exporter of organic Arabica coffee globally. With extremely high altitudes and fertile soils, the country’s smallholder farmers also produce some stunning specialty coffees.
Though coffee arrived in Peru in the 1700s, very little coffee was exported until the late 1800s. Until that point, most coffee produced in Peru was consumed locally. When coffee leaf rust hit Indonesia in the late 1800s, a country central to European coffee imports at the time, Europeans began searching elsewhere for their fix. Peru was a perfect option.
Between the late 1800s and the first World War, European interests invested significant resources into coffee production in Peru. However, with the advent of the two World Wars, England and other European powers became weakened and took a less colonialist perspective. When the British and other European land owners left, their land was purchased by the government and redistributed to locals. The Peruvian government repurchased the 2 million hectares previously granted to England and distributed the lands to thousands of local farmers. Many of these farmers later grew coffee on the lands they received.
Today, Peruvian coffee growers are overwhelmingly small scale. Farmers in Peru usually process their coffee on their own farms. Most coffee is Fully washed. Cherry is usually pulped, fermented and dried in the sun on raised beds or drying sheds. Drying greenhouses and parabolic beds are becoming more common as farmers pivot towards specialty markets.
After drying, coffee will then be sold in parchment to the cooperative. Producers who are not members of a cooperative will usually sell to a middleman.
The remoteness of farms combined with their small size means that producers need either middlemen or cooperatives to help get their coffee to market. Cooperative membership protects farmers greatly from exploitation and can make a huge difference to income from coffee. Nonetheless, currently only around 15-25% of smallholder farmers have joined a coop group.