About This Coffee
This coffee is produced by two farmers, Santos Marrufo and Luciano Perez, from the Chontali area in the Cajamarca Region, which is located three hours from Jaén. The name "Rumi" comes from the Quechua word meaning "stone," reflecting the rocky landscape of the area and the resilience of the coffee bean. These coffees have been recognized as specialty coffees for the past five years, renowned for their high quality.
Santos Marrufo
Santos has participated in various local quality competitions, often placing among the top producers due to his exceptional quality. In 2024, he won first place in the Chontali District competition. A dedicated coffee producer, Santos prepares his microlots with the help of his wife, Rosalía Tarrillo, who assists him with harvesting and processing at their small facility. Santos has diversified his production to include cane liquor and a sweet called chancaca, which he markets locally.
Luciano Perez
Luciano is committed to quality and strives to improve it every year. This year, he installed a pulping machine to increase processing efficiency. His next goal is to upgrade his drying system to maintain quality despite the rainy climate during harvest season.
Cultivation
Santos owns 3 hectares of land in total, 2 of which are dedicated to coffee, located in the Miraflores settlement at an elevation of 1,900 meters above sea level.
From a young age, Luciano worked hard to acquire his own land. He now has 4.5 hectares of land, 3.5 of which are dedicated to coffee, located in the Las Limas settlement at an elevation of 1,800 meters.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Rumi Lot is a washed coffee with an average fermentation time of 20 hours. Its fruity flavor comes from allowing the cherries to ripen to a deep grape color on the plant. The coffee is 100% shade-dried in a solar dryer.
Coffee in Peru
Peru holds exceptional promise as a producer of high-quality coffees. The country is the largest exporter of organic Arabica coffee globally. With extremely high altitudes and fertile soils, the country’s smallholder farmers also produce some stunning specialty coffees.
Though coffee arrived in Peru in the 1700s, very little coffee was exported until the late 1800s. Until that point, most coffee produced in Peru was consumed locally. When coffee leaf rust hit Indonesia in the late 1800s, a country central to European coffee imports at the time, Europeans began searching elsewhere for their fix. Peru was a perfect option.
Between the late 1800s and the first World War, European interests invested significant resources into coffee production in Peru. However, with the advent of the two World Wars, England and other European powers became weakened and took a less colonialist perspective. When the British and other European land owners left, their land was purchased by the government and redistributed to locals. The Peruvian government repurchased the 2 million hectares previously granted to England and distributed the lands to thousands of local farmers. Many of these farmers later grew coffee on the lands they received.
Today, Peruvian coffee growers are overwhelmingly small scale. Farmers in Peru usually process their coffee on their own farms. Most coffee is Fully washed. Cherry is usually pulped, fermented and dried in the sun on raised beds or drying sheds. Drying greenhouses and parabolic beds are becoming more common as farmers pivot towards specialty markets.
After drying, coffee will then be sold in parchment to the cooperative. Producers who are not members of a cooperative will usually sell to a middleman.
The remoteness of farms combined with their small size means that producers need either middlemen or cooperatives to help get their coffee to market. Cooperative membership protects farmers greatly from exploitation and can make a huge difference to income from coffee. Nonetheless, currently only around 15-25% of smallholder farmers have joined a coop group.