Farm: La Guaba
Region: Chirinos 
Variety: Caturra

This is the first Peruvian coffee we’ve featured as our mellow espresso in the cafe. The outstanding balance of gentle fruit and vanilla cookie sweetness, along with the rich, full body convinced us it would be a winner. While it’s great as an espresso, this coffee won’t disappoint whichever brewing method you choose.

Like the previous few Peruvian coffees we’ve sold, including the ones produced by Herminio Ramirez and Freddy Bermeo, Cordova’s coffee comes to us through Falcon Peru. They’ve been importing outstanding coffees from small producers in Northern Peru for several years. Cordova’s small, 2-hectare farm has about 8,000 trees that are all about 8 years old. Like many small producers, Cordova uses ecological practices on his farm. Rather than using chemical fertiliser, he uses the waste from guinea pigs along with the pulp produced from milling coffee cherries to fertilise his coffee trees.

Coffee supply chains vary quite a lot from region to region. The Peruvian coffees we roast are an interesting case study in how stakeholders can impact the supply chain to increase the quality of coffee being produced as well as increase the revenue to farmers. In Chirinos small farmers like Cordova had previously sold their unprocessed cherry to middlemen who weren’t concerned with quality and would pay a relatively low price for the raw material. The middlemen would then sell the cherry on to exporters, who sold it to importers, who sold it to roasters. Falcon Coffees, an importer, saw that if they could forge relationships directly with these small producers, cutting out the middlemen, they could support practices to increase crop quality and therefore import coffees that would fetch higher prices and funnel those gains back to the farmers. 

Because Falcon works directly with farmers to bring their coffee to market they can also be fully transparent about the prices the farmers receive for their crop. This is really exciting for us on the consumer end because prices in the coffee industry have historically been shrouded in mystery. This is especially true of prices paid to farmers, who are usually separated by several steps from the end roaster and consumer. 

Hear more about Falcon Peru  in Season 2, Episode 2 of Behind the Beans, Steampunk’s podcast. In that episode our roaster, Rachel Beebe, talks to Head of Sales at Falcon, Line Cosmidis. 

Peru Regulo Mejia Cordova

Specialty coffee roasters and cafe based in North Berwick, Scotland. Roastery, cafe and online shop for beans and equipment

Peru Regulo Mejia Cordova

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Peru Regulo Mejia Cordova