Mountain King Organic Espresso

Every year, our coffee importer selects the very best lots from the community of El Mirador, high in Peru’s Cajamarca Region. This 2018 lot hails from various producers that live along the base of El Mirador and whose coffee plots are located in the Horcon Alto valley, at an average altitude of around 1,850 metres. The land is so rich and lush here that farmers don’t even have to fertilise the land, making the coffee organically grown by default.

Each contributing family member has their own, individual farm, but they do not live on the coffee plot but rather have a small house on the land where they stay during the harvest. Many pulp the coffee there on the farm, but many also carry the coffee cherry (or parchment) back to their homes (around 1 km away), where it will be pulped, fermented and dried.

All farmers contributing to this lot are members of the Santuario Association of Coffee Producers (Asociación De Productores Cafetaleros El Santuario), which works with small scale producers in Cajamarca, Peru.

Advised by Santuario agricultural technicians, all farmers use the same strict harvest and processing methods so as to insure that the natural potential of their coffee is maintained. During the harvest, coffee is selectively handpicked with only the ripest cherries being harvested at each pass. These cherries are then hand-sorted to ensure no underripe or damaged cherries make it into the fermentation tanks. The coffee is pulped on the same day that it is picked using a mechanical or hand turned pulper, as mentioned located on the farm or at the farmer’s home. After pulping, it will then ferment in a tin or cement tank for up to 30 to 40 hours (depending on ambient temperature, which is very cool at this altitude) before being washed clean in pure water. The coffee will then be delivered to patios or tarpaulins for pre-drying for around 2-3 hours. Many of the producers, on the advice of Santuario, have constructed raised ‘African’ beds for drying, and the clean parchment will shortly be moved from the patios to be finished on these or on Solares (raised drying sheds). Here, the parchment is turned regularly for 20 to 25 days until humidity reaches 11.5-12% humidity.

The farmers feel blessed to be members and clients of Santuario – a small coffee business formed of numerous small farms that neighbour one another in Cajamarca, Peru. Established in August of 2017, ‘Santuario’ members must have years of coffee growing experience and must share a vision of improving the quality of their production. Although the participating farms are all small – around 3 to 5 hectares on average – the total land under coffee represented by the group is around 250 hectares in total, thus the productive potential is substantial.