El Cruce (Peru)

Flavour Description: Passionfruit, Yoghurt, Floral. Producer: Joel Marin. Farm: El Cruce. Region / Country: La Palma, Cajamarca, Peru. Varietal: Geisha. Process: Natural Process. Roasters Notes: We have roasted this coffee to a medium/medium light level which accentuates the floral and tropical fruit notes. This is a very complex coffee, full of layered flavours. Brew as espresso or as filter. Our preference is to drink this coffee without milk. Joel Marin is a second generation coffee farmer from La Palma, Chirinos. Joel is one of four brothers, all coffee farmers, who learnt the trade from his father, Silvestre, a prominent coffee farmer in the area who has relatively large amounts of land. Joel spent many years working on his father’s farm and buying and selling coffee locally in order to save up for his own piece of land. Now that he has his own 3ha plot at 1800masl he has stopped buying coffee and is completely dedicated to his own farm and production. Joel bought the El Cruce plot in 2020 and planted it with Marshel (a local variety), Geisha and Bolo (catimor) in 2021. Joel carries out most of the work on the farm himself, but for the peak of the harvest hires workers and calls on his brothers for help with the picking. The farm is planted with a large spacing between rows in order to allow for more light to reach the plants and for better aeration to prevent fungal diseases. The trees are fertilised regularly with chemical fertiliser and the weeding is done by a combination of herbicide (applied once a year) and manual weeding with a strimmer or machete in the more difficult to access parts of the farm. Joel dreams of competing in local and national quality competitions and for that reason he planted the three varieties that he has; geisha which is considered the best quality variety, marshel which is a local variety with high cup quality and CLR resistance and Bolo which is a catimor that produces extremely well and has a consistently good cup quality. This lot was processed as a natural, fermented for 12 hours prior to drying. Geisha cherry brought in from the field was rinsed and floaters removed before being placed in plastic bags, similar to grainpro, for a period of 12 hours for a short ferment. After 12 hours the coffee was removed from the bags and placed on raised beds. Joel dries his coffees on raised beds inside a drying tent, or on a covered, wooden patio. Both forms of drying the coffee allow for a consistent and even drying, which is closely monitored by Joel’s wife. The natural coffee usually takes between 25 and 30 days to dry and once dry Joel rests the coffee in his house in the farm for two to three weeks before delivering it to the Chacra warehouse in Jaen.