Ilda Marina Leon

A Fruity, Elegant End to Ecuador Season

We’re rounding off Ecuador season with this vibrant and elegant coffee from Ilda Marina Leon and her family at Finca La Chirimoya. A meticulously cultivated lot, it showcases the clarity and complexity that Ecuador’s high-altitude farms can deliver.

The Farm

Spanning just 1 hectare, Doña Ilda has been producing coffee here on Finca La Chirimoya in Zamora-Chinchipe for the last 25 years. The majority of the farm is planted out with Caturra, with around 20% dedicated to the Typica cultivar. In more recent years Doña Ilda has relied on the help of her family to run the farm and produce their coffee. She remains in charge of post-harvest protocols, such as how to ferment and dry each batch of coffee, but her husband and son perform the fieldwork such as pruning the coffee trees and harvesting coffee cherries. 

Their Approach

For the last 25 years Doña Ilda has adhered to organic agricultural practices, and in more recent years she has received technical assistance and training from Caravela’s PECA team. To maximise the quality of her cultivars they are implementing a 24hr reposado phase (sometimes referred to as an in-cherry fermentation stage, or maceration phase), before the coffee is depulped and dry fermented for 32 hours. After this stage it is fully washed and cleaned before being put to dry on raised beds under shade coverings. In the future the family wishes to expand their production through improved productivity as well as planting more coffee trees, strengthening their potential income from specialty coffee production. 

The Exporter

Caravela Coffee, with whom we have been lucky to travel with around Ecuador, are a Carbon Neutral B Corp with a boots-on-the-ground approach, employing a team of agronomists to run their PECA training program. This form of farmer outreach is extremely valuable, not just in raising the quality and quantity of a producer’s outturns through dispensing agronomical advice, but in predicting yields, planning and financial support. Ecuador boasts a negative carbon footprint for green coffee production, with -0.5kg carbon emitted per kilo of green produced, thanks in part to the native forestry maintained and protected on coffee farms acting as a carbon sink, as well as minimal use of fertilisers and agro-inputs. Caravela have been working in Ecuador since 2007 and now support a network of over 200 individual coffee farmers and families. Their main buying hub for the south is in Catamayo. After being cupped and graded, blended lots are composed and the parchment coffee is moved to Quito to be hulled and have the quality refined and homogenised at Caravela’s own dry mill.