Flavour profile: This coffee has a floral aroma. It is a complex yet delicate taste profile. Flavour notes of jasmine, cacao nibs and bubble tea with a refreshingly bright acidity of white wine. The coffee has a long-lasting citric aftertaste. The body is light and the finish tart.
Colour: Pink
Category: Adventurous
Producer: Pedro-Pablo, Daniela, and Pedro Rodriguez
Location: Bolinda, Caranavi, Bolivia
Varietal: Gesha. The Rodriguez family has planted two kinds of Gesha at their farm, one from Hawaii and one from the well-known Hacienda La Esmeralda - which is the best Gesha growing in the world.
Lot: Mirador
Altitude: 1580 masl
Processing: Lactic fermented before it is fully washed
Price transparency: The FOB price paid for this coffee was US$35/lb, or US$80.74/kilo.
Roast: Light to medium to present the characteristics of the coffee
The Alasitas Gesha, we buy every year and love its complex yet delicate and clean taste profile. This lot is Lactic fermented before it is washed processed.
There are many experiments in processing speciality coffee at the moment. This coffee is lactic processed, which is interesting on its own. But there is another experiment, underneath this, that excites us even more; how the coffee has been removed from the branch of the coffee plant and harvested without breaking the coffee cherries structure. Instead of picking the coffee by hand, this method involves cutting them off the branch, cherry by cherry, using scissors. We are not saying this is the direction to go, it is purely an experiment on how to increase the highest level of coffee even more.
With all humbleness for the cost to produce a coffee harvested in the way, we are beyond excited to see how this gentleness improves the coffee quality.
The Scissor Project
When the coffee cherry is picked from its stem, it creates a break which will cause that cherry to oxidize as well as leak mucilage surrounding the beans within the cherry. Much like when you eat grapes and remove them from their stem, you would not prefer them so much if they had previously had hours to dry out and lose some of their sweet juice, right?
As the cherries are picked, it will be several hours before it is at the processing station. In theory, this will not only make the coffee lose some liquid of mucilage that is a sweetness in the coffee, but that gradual leakage gathering at the bottom of the bag/sack you are packing the coffee into means a very uncontrolled process of the bacterias surrounding the freshly harvested coffee. On top of that, the coffee cherry will start to dry out and oxidate. So in theory, it would be more controlled to cut the end of the branch of which the coffee cherry stems, to keep the cherry whole and as one. And this is exactly what Pedro, Daniela, and Pedro Pablo have instructed the pickers to do on the Gesha grown at Alasitas. As an experiment.
For sure this harvesting method is a quality increase. Will it make a difference that we can notice in the taste? Let’s see.
Read more about the project in this blog post.
About the Rodriguez family
Those of you who been buying Bolivian coffees from us, already know Pedro, Daniela and Pedro Pablo quite well. The Rodriguez family owns their own mills, processing and exporting coffee for farmers in the Caranarvi and Sud Yungas region. Since 1986, Pedro has been sourcing coffee from small coffee producers, but the steady decline of coffee production has put the sustainability of their export business in jeopardy. Without the intervention of people like the Rodriguez family, however, the future of coffee production in Bolivia is at risk of disappearing. The family has taken on the challenge of increasing the production of coffee in Bolivia by planting their own new coffee plantations.
Sustainability
The Rodriguez family has in the last three years introduced a sustainability model for the producers who supply them at their mill and built this on three pillars: economical sustainability, social understanding, and environmental awareness - Sol de Mañana. business model got the SCA Sustainability Award for Sustainable Business model.
What we do know is that it is a lot more expensive to cut cherry by cherry using scissors. With the coffee prices that are on the market today, the math does not do. For this coffee, we have paid 35 USD per pound, which gives a landing price of 80.74 USD per kilo, before we are roasting 12% away. As a part of our price transparency, we are sharing the FOB prices for the coffee, which for this coffee was US$35/lb, or US$80.74/kilo.
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