Peru Cajamarca Ihuamaca Fredislinda Calle – 30399 – GrainPro Bags – SPOT SEAFORTH

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Please Note This coffee landed more than 8 months ago.

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About this coffee

Grower

Fredislinda Calle Jimenez | Finca Agua Cristalina

Altitude

1825 masl

Variety

Bourbon, Caturra, and Catimor

Soil

Clay minerals

Region

Ihuamaca, San Ignacio, Cajamarca, Peru

Process

Fully washed

Harvest

May - September

Certification

Conventional

Coffee Background

In Peru by far the bulk of coffee production comes from small farms owned and managed by people who have for many years followed organic farm management practice attuned to their cultural connection with the land. Producers typically cultivate coffee on just a few acres of land intercropped with shade trees, fruits and vegetables. Small producers are often very careful about picking and sorting their cherry prior to depulping, fermenting, washing, and drying the coffee, all on personal equipment and on personal property. While producers design farm management and post-harvest solutions to fit their varying needs, they also need a strong business alliance to bring their coffee to the international market and earn fair prices, regardless if the coffees are blended or sold independently.
This particular lot of coffee comes from a single producer named Fredislindad Calle Jimenez, whose 6 hectare farm has the wonderful name of “Agua Cristalina”. Fredislinda’s farm is in the Ihuamaca community, part of Cajamarca’s San Ignacio district, in the mountains north of the region’s main trading city of Jaén. Fredislinda first purchased her property in 2000 and currently has 3 of the farm’s 6 hectares planted with coffee. She is the second generation in her family to cultivate coffee and sees the trade not only as a necessity for herself given her background in coffee but also as a critical financial input—the only source of currency generated by her land. Aside from coffee Fredislinda also produces plantains and yucca for consumption.
With the cold high-elevation climate in her area, Fredislinda often continues picking coffee into November each year, months beyond the majority of Peru’s crop. She employs 6 pickers between July and August to cover the majority of harvesting. Coffee is depulped with a motorized pulping machine and fermented dry for 24 hours in a handmade tank. After fermentation is complete, parchment is washed again with clean water and moved to dry in a homemade solar dryer, a process that takes 20-24 days to complete.
This single-farmer microlot come to us from Origin Coffee Lab, an exemplary alliance recently established in Peru’s competitive north. The small team put together by José Rivera and Alex Julca--career cuppers, farmers, exporters, and quality managers who grew up in Peru’s sought-after northern coffee terroir--is quickly gaining a reputation for their outstanding portfolio of microlot coffees and above-expectations regional blends. Which should be no surprise, given the founders have decades of experience working with farmers of all kinds and cupping thousands of samples from across the Cajamarca region. So, they know what they’re aiming for. Origin Coffee Lab uses their extensive experience to set high standards for farms, with generous price premiums in place for those who rise to the occasion. But it’s not simply a take-it-or-leave-it proposition: their “Solidario” program is a curriculum that teaches best practices in farm management and processing to help small farmers maximize their quality, and profit. Farmers in northern Cajamarca province, which includes districts like Chirinos, San Ignacio, and Huabal, all famous for great coffee, certainly have their choice of exporter. So the growing partnerships for Origin Coffee Lab and the popularity of their coffees signal that they clearly are offering something worthwhile to top farmers.