Yulissa Chambi is a young and accomplished Bolivian coffee professional whose coffee we are proud to feature for the fourth consecutive year as a Crown Jewel. Doing so year after year has not been easy—her coffee is limited and highly sought after locally thanks to her rapid ascent in Bolivia’s national specialty scene.
Yulissa’s personal story is a nice analog to the recent history of Bolivia’s specialty coffee as a whole. After decades of neglect, the family farm was recently reinvigorated and now produces some of the tastiest washed coffee anywhere in South America. Along the way, Yulissa became Bolivia’s National Aeropress Champion and very involved barista. As a producer, Yulissa’s particular ability to use anaerobic fermentation, not as a transformation effort but as a subtle enrichment of the already abundant botanical flavors of her fully washed coffee, is among the best applications of the method we taste each year from anywhere.
This year’s lot from Yulissa’s farm is lightly creamy with a sweetness evocative of a tropical fruit smoothie. There's a balanced florality that ranges from soft jasmine to invigorating juniper, and the kind of tart center of red fruits and complex brown sugars that come from perfectly ripe picked cherry.
Caranavi and its Coffee
Bolivia is South America's only landlocked coffee producing country and is the smallest exporter of coffee on the continent. The quality of that coffee, however, is hardly lacking in diversity or beauty. Bolivia’s terrain and geography is gifted for arabica production, particularly throughout the Yungas region (Yungas is Aymara for "warm lands"), whose mountain ranges connect the low and humid Amazonian basin to the dry Andean altiplano above. The most productive municipality in the Yungas is by far Caranavi, which still produces an estimated 85-90% of Bolivia's specialty coffee.
Caranavi's landscape is steep, humid, rugged, and remote, with natural forest making up more than 90% of the territory. Historically coffee in this area was challenged by a devastating combination of isolation and national disinvestment. These days, after decades of struggle, coffee farms in Caranavi's high and tropical climate tend to be well-managed and diversified, but small. Coffee growers here still often don’t have processing equipment or transportation of their own, a massive hurdle in such territory.
Yulissa’s Farm
In the 1980s, Yulissa’s family purchased a 20-hectare piece of property in the Yungas region, in the mountains surrounding the small valley city of Caranavi. At the time, the farm was pure jungle; no roads or services of any kind could access it.
5 years after the purchase, her family planted 4 hectares of coffee. For the next 40 years the family land was cherished for its location and refuge from city life in La Paz, but due to declining coffee prices and disinvestment from Bolivia’s government, coffee production was not a viable trade for the family, and was therefore not an investment worth making. Over the years the coffee trees aged and lost their production, and the family remained in the city where occupational prospects were far better.
In 2019, Yulissa’s generation decided it was time to renovate the farm. Bolivia’s specialty coffee had developed to the point where Caranavi was seen as an area of high terroir potential, and Yulissa herself, barely out of secondary school, was interested in the bubbling specialty roaster and barista culture in the city.
Between 2019 and 2021, the original 4 hectares were re-planted, along with 3 new ones. With this newly invigorated coffee under her control, Yulissa dedicated herself to producing coffee the best way possible. In the process she also set to learning the rest of the value chain, from milling to roasting and barismo—the art and practice of being a barista, which strangely has no English equivalent.
The 7 hectares of coffee is managed by extended family and neighbors throughout the year. During harvest the family employs 8 pickers, and otherwise covers all necessary harvesting and processing themselves.
Anaerobic Processing
For this anaerobic washed lot, hand-harvested cherry was carefully sorted for consistency and floated for density, after which it was then washed clean and placed into closed containers to ferment anaerobically for 72 hours. After this brief whole cherry fermentation stage, the coffee was then mechanically depulped and fermented in a traditional open top tank for 20 hours, until the residual mucilage was mostly dissolved. After this second fermentation in parchment, the mucilage was carefully washed away and the parchment was transferred to raised screen beds to dry in the sun.
Since Bolivia is a landlocked coffee producing country, all farmers, and microlot farmers more than most, need help getting their coffee to the international market. Felix Chambi Garcia, a contact of Royal’s who works with various producer groups in the country, has become an important figure, helping producers with the logistics of moving coffee to the dry mill where quality and traceability are protected during the preparation for export.
