Coffee has been in Bolivia for hundreds of years, but now a new generation of coffee farmers dedicated to producing high-quality coffee are taking the stage in Bolivia. For the first time in the country’s history, green coffee production has funding and support from the federal government, fueling the search for knowledge among dedicated young coffee professionals. The epicenter in the rise of Bolivian specialty coffee is in the los Yungas region, where most farms were first established after a wave of migration to the region caused by Bolivia’s Agrarian Revolution in the 1950s. And nearly a century later this lot emerges from a single 110 acre farm called Finca de Café Villa el Carmen, which belongs to Maria Nidia Azcarrunz and her family. Maria is a first generation producer with 15 years of experience. Maria takes a traditional approach with a washed process and her attention to detail shows flawlessly at the cupping table. Starting with carefully harvested the cherry, Maria floats the cherries to remove damaged and less dense beans, depulps, ferments the coffee for 20 hours, washes and classifies the coffee in channels, and gently dries the coffee on raised beds. Next the coffee is moved to the dry-mill where quality and traceability are protected during the preparation for export. This particular lot of peaberry, identified by the round shape formed from the maturation of one seed per cherry rather than the typical two seeds, was selected using screens designed to capture the peaberry.
