Notes: silky smooth milk chocolate base with citrus sweet notes. Luxurious rich, deep fragrance with soft, citric acidity finish
Process: Washed Arabica
Altitude: 1300-2000 MASL
Varietals: Caturra, typica, bourbon, Catuai, Catimor
Region: North-West Peru
Certification: Organic, Rainforest Alliance
Roast: Medium
A strong, pleasing coffee with chocolate and cocoa central to its flavour profile, think hot chocolate with cinnamon and a bit of malt powder. Complex as a brewed coffee.
Peru is quickly building a global reputation for producing traditionally cultivated, shade grown, high quality Arabica beans. This wasn’t always the case.
There are more than 110,000 coffee growers in Peru, most live on 2 or 3 hectares, hours away from the comforts of electricity and running water. Peruvian coffee farmers' landholdings are small, and the country's typical micro-wet-milling operation is even smaller.
After processing their coffee, most farmers hike their beans by foot or mule into the nearest town—a trip that can take anywhere from thirty minutes to eight hours. On Saturdays, the plaza of the closest town becomes a buying and selling station for the surrounding remote coffee growers. Farmers sell their coffee and buy goods for their homes before heading back up the mountainous foot trails. An unfortunate--but all too common--experience at these buying and selling plazas is the arrival of only one buyer, which can dramatically decrease the price paid to farmers for their coffee.
During the last decade, Peru’s smaller cooperatives consolidated their movements to protect those exploited by traditional trading practices. An estimated 15-25% of Peru’s smallholders now belong to co-ops linked with Fair Trade and Organic networks, which has led to Peru becoming the second largest supplier of Fair Trade certified coffee, and one of the world’s top Organic producers. These cooperatives have built infrastructures for improving coffee quality, processing and exporting, training for farmers into certified organic production and social development projects.
The benefits extend beyond fair trade pricing for the farmers. The farmers are organized, developing a sense of solidarity and identity through participation in their cooperatives. They have the ability to own and control their means of production. One farmer shares her reflections, "Before there were no trainings. But now they tell us about the roles of men and women. You learn to value yourself. You learn about participation." Sip. Savour. Be part of this change.
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