About This Coffee
Gregoria Miranda Huaman has been cultivating coffee at Finca Mesapata since 2005. The farm’s name, which translates to “table legs”, comes from trees on the farm that produce fruit that look like the legs of a traditional table.
Cultivation
The high altitude of 2,000 meters above sea level is quite high for coffee production. In this case, a warming climate has made it possible to cultivate coffee at such high altitudes. The high altitude also helps minimize instances of pests and diseases, which allows Gregoria to plant Bourbon variety trees. These high-quality varieties have immense potential for high-quality profiles but are highly susceptible to the pests and diseases that plague coffee production. Those pests and diseases don’t fare well in cooler climates and are less likely to spread to high altitude regions.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Cherry is selectively handpicked and processed on the farm. They float and visually hand sort all cherry before pulping it. Parchment and remaining mucilage is laid on covered raised beds to dry. Parchment is raked frequently to ensure even drying. It takes approximately 6 days for parchment to dry.
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.