Rio Blanco Espresso

Inviting aromatics of vanilla and soft fruit accents make this wonderfully sweet lot really delicious as espresso! Having worked with the Río Blanco co-operative for 3 years, we have spent an inordinate amount of time cupping through individual farmer outturns, to separate out those more intriguing and complex lots. This coffee release represents the four top scoring consignments. 

Having featured outturns from Río Blanco in our Article house blend under the ‘Workshop Select’ moniker, it is exciting to feature this slightly more fruity and elegant lot as a standalone single origin espresso, our ‘Workshop Reserve’. The 4 producing families from Namballe whose coffee is featured in this release are growing their coffee from around 1,700 up to 1,900 metres. Coffees from San Ignacio in the north of Peru tend to be a little more pointed and fruit driven than the other lots we source from the Huadquiña and Valle Inca associations in Cusco, with a slightly riper and more pronounced acidity. We have to say thank you to Isauro Flores, Sigifredo Dominguez, Samuel Jiminez and Maria Zurita for their efforts in producing our favourite coffees from the co-operative this year. 

Cultivars are primarily Typica & Bourbon, with some small lots of Caturra, Pache and San Ramon. Farm sizes are typically around 1-2 hectares and the coffee trees are planted under native Albizia and Pacay shade trees and amidst secondary food crops like yucca, citrus and bananas. All of the Río Blanco producers are working to high standards and undertaking harvest and processing methodologies in the manner typical to the region. Coffee is organically grown under shade, the coffee cherries are hand harvested via communal work in tandem with their neighbours, The cherries are manually depulped and then wet fermented between 18 and 24 hours before washing and slowly drying for around 15 days on raised beds.