A truly committed and gentle coffee producer, we’re thrilled to be working with a coffee from Juan José Huillca Singuña for our fourth year.
The Producer
Juan has been producing coffee on his 2-hectare farm, Finca San Antonio in Alto Cedruyoc, since 2015. Coffee production is a family endeavour on the farm, and Juan is working in tandem with his wife and two children. They are continually working to produce high quality coffee, of both Bourbon and Maragogype varieties, and Juan uses his experience as an agronomist in tending to their crops. When visiting some of the Valle Inca members with the group president, José Prudencio, we were able to connect with Juan for dinner and he was very humble and forthcoming, even after a long day of picking and processing coffee with his family.
Their Approach
The family farm is quite remote, amidst lots of native wildlife and vegetation, which Juan does his best to preserve and respect. As well as mature coffee trees that are already bearing fruit, Juan tends to a small nursery of coffee seedlings which allows the family to replace sick and tired trees as well as expand their production. They are working organically at Finca San Antonio, applying natural fertilisers to their coffee trees and growing the coffee under shade canopies. At harvest time Juan and his family collect the ripe coffee cherries and just last year they have introduced a holding or resting stage before depulping the cherries of 96 hours. The cherries begin to soften and macerate before manually depulping and subsequently undergoing a 36 hour anaerobic fermentation in sealed barrels. The coffee is then scrubbed and washed, the loosen the broken-down mucilage, and it is put to dry for between 9 and 15 days on raised beds in polytunnels, which were built courtesy of funds donated by the Valle Inca Association. Transitioning to this processing approach from a more traditional style of fermentation we are experiencing a slightly rounder cup from Juan, with more plump fruit and a longer finish, whilst retaining a clean, silky mouthfeel.
The Association
In 2018, our first year buying coffee through Valle Inca, the group had around 100 members. Thanks to word of mouth, with producers telling their neighbours of the premium prices that they were able to receive having been able to access a more discerning coffee market through the association, the group now works with around 300 producers in the Cusco region and have recently expanded their operations to include Puno. All the members are working organically and are certified as such via the Valle Inca group. For a member to join, there needs to be a baseline of quality met, dictated in part by altitude and the type of varieties planted, but ultimately it is down to the desire of each member to improve their quality through hard work. The group provide agronomical advice and training as well as pre-financing, so the farmer members are supported in multiple ways. Several of their members reliably place well in Peru’s Cup of Excellence competition.
