Peru Huabal Mario Rafael

Where many farmers have opted for disease-resistant varieties, Mario Rafael Chamaya is one of a few Huabal farmers still growing Caturra and Bourbon. These cultivars known for producing high cup quality, especially at 1850 meters above sea level, like his farm. His 2.5 hectare plot of land is on the outskirts of a small village of Santa Rosa, in Huabal. He uses a simple, but effective method to grade the coffee during the harvest in order to separate out the best quality. All of the coffee cherry passes through what is called a "flotation" tank where the lighter, unripe coffee floats to the top and processed as a lower grade, while the heavy, ripe coffee that sinks is processed as top grade. He also soaks his coffee in water after the fermentation process to help clean off any remaining fruit mucilage before sending to the drying beds. They call this, "double fermentation", though no fermentation actually occurs during the second soak. Mario Rafael sold his coffee through a neighbor who consolidated coffee from a few of the surrounding farms in a single blend. The export group we are buying this coffee through are working in the region to isolate the different pockets of quality so that the upper tier, like Angel's, are no longer lost to blending.