Starting our new season Peru, this first release is from our longstanding producing partners Valle Inca. This is our eighth year working with the group, to showcase individual producers’ lots as well as create community blends so that we can feature their coffees across our whole coffee menu.
A new name for us, we’re really loving this floral and fruity Bourbon selection from Eusebia Rudas Camara, on her farm Finca Pukamocco.
Producer
Eusebia has been working in partnership with the Valle Inca Association for the last eight years. As such she is one of the original members, and held up as a shining example of good agricultural practices, harvesting and post-harvest protocols, to ensure high quality outturns.
She tends Bourbon coffee trees on her 4-hectare farm, Pukamocco, which are about a dozen years old. Being situated at 1,800 metres above sea level means that both Broca (coffee borer beetle) and Roya (coffee leaf rust) are not hugely problematic.
Farm & Environment
Eusebia has various shade trees on her farm, including Erythrina Falcata (Pisonay). In Quechua the name is Pukamocco, for which the farm is named, and this tree is considered sacred across the Andes.
The coffee plants are nourished with a homemade compost, composed primarily of spent coffee pulp and other organic materials.
Processing
In processing her harvested coffee cherries, Eusebia first floats them in water to skim off the less dense fruit. They are then fed through a manual disc depulper to remove the seed from the fruit. The depulped parchment is sieved to remove any coffee cherry skins.
The mucilage-laden parchment coffee is fermented inside GrainPro sacks which are sealed in a plastic barrel. A tube allows for degassing, as the microbiome breaking down the coffee’s mucilage produces CO₂ during this stage.
After around 36 hours the fermented coffee is fully washed in clean water from natural springs found on the farm, and it is then treated in wells. The parchment coffee is placed onto raised beds in a parabolic drier to slowly dry down to a stable moisture content over around 18 days.
Valle Inca 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 they were able to receive by accessing a more discerning coffee market through the association - the group now works with over 375 producers in the Cusco region, and has grown operations into Puno and other producing areas.
All 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 varieties planted, but ultimately driven by each producer’s desire to improve through hard work.
The group provides agronomical advice, training, and pre-financing, supporting farmers in multiple ways. Several Valle Inca members repeatedly place well in Peru’s Cup of Excellence competition.
We remain in touch with José Prudencio, the group’s president, throughout the year to hear how they are progressing and to maintain an open dialogue.
