About This Coffee
Merlith Cruz farms Las Etíopes’ 7 hectares high the mountains surrounding the village of El Porvenir in Jaén, Cajamarca. Merlith’s main focus is on quality and sustainability, an approach that makes the utmost of the region’s unique terroir.
Las Etíopes sits at a lofty 1,950 meters above sea level and reaches 2,050m at its highest point. These high altitudes are ideal for growing the varieties planted on the farm, which include Caturra and Bourbon. This lot is composed entirely of Geisha, which Merlith grows on a very special 2 hectare plot of the farm. This section is also planted under other quality renowned varieties, such as Wush Wush and Sidra.
Las Etíopes means ‘The Ethiopian Women’ in Spanish, a nod to the Ethiopian heritage of the varieties grown on the farm.
Cultivation
Merlith and her husband Simon bought the farm in 2019 and they planted the first trees in early 2020. Of the Ethiopian varieties planted on the 2 hectare sub-plot, they have established 5 lines, some of which are compact types and others taller and somewhat similar to Bourbon. The farm’s Geisha section is made up of two different lines, one which is a Geisha type from Ethiopia and the other was planted with seed from Panama. The majority of the Geisha currently in production is from the latter, Panama line.
Cultivation is undertaken with an eye towards sustainability and biodiversity presentation. Chemical fertilizer application is kept to a minimum and all weeding is done manually.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Almost all of the coffee produced at Las Etiopes is processed as Fully washed. From the very beginning, Merlith and the team have been refining the process and have adapted it to the different varieties grown on the farm.
For Geisha lots such as this one, coffee is selectively hand harvested and then hand sorted. After harvesting, the cherry is rinsed and then floated in fresh, cold spring water, which serves to both remove lower quality beans and also to clean the cherry and reduce its microbial load. This is particularly important for extended fermentation lots such as this one, as it helps to prevent over-fermentation during processing.
After rinsing and floating, cherry is then fermented for a total period of 48 hours – 12 hours is in cherry and 36 hours after pulping. This long fermentation is possible due to the cool temperature at the farm which slows the fermentation.
After floating, the coffee is placed in small barrels where it ferments for 12 hours. After this, cherry is pulped and then placed back into the same barrel along with the juice from the cherries reserved from the first fermentation stage.
After fermentation and washing, the coffee is dried first on uncovered raised beds for 12 hours before being moved to a covered drying tent (solar) where it dries slowly for a period of 15 to 18 days, depending on the weather conditions.
About Geisha
Geisha (also known as Gesha) is known for its exceptional cup quality, especially when grown at high altitudes. The variety comes from Ethiopian landrace coffees and was collected from Ethiopian coffee forests in the 1930s. The name supposedly derives from Ethiopia’s Gori Gesha forest.
There is some confusion with several genetically distinct varieties that have all been called Geisha, but the most famous variety is the Panama one. The variety was brought to Lyamungu research station in Tanzania and from there to Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Central America in 1953. At CATIE, the variety was logged as T2722. CATIE distributed T2722 across Panama in the 1960s for its Coffee Leaf Rust (CLR) resistance, but its brittle branches meant it was not widely planted.
Panama Geisha reached its modern fame in 2005 when a Geisha lot won the “Best of Panama” competition and broke contemporary records at over $20/pound. DNA analysis has demonstrated that the Panama Geisha descended from T2722 is distinct and uniform. Today, Geisha is known for its delicate florals, jasmine and stone fruit.
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.