A fantastically characterful coffee bursting with flavour right the way from hot to cold – there are notes of juicy strawberry, hints of mango and an overall orange wine-like flavour bringing a funky character to this sweet and bold lot. It is suited to most brew methods but may bring too much ‘funk’ to milk based drinks, it depends on your preference!

As an origin, Peru possesses all of the necessary factors for the production of outstanding quality coffee with fantastic altitude, varietals and fertile soils. Despite this, some of the great quality coffee on offer can be swallowed up by the commercial industry with lots of smallholder producers being left marginalised and isolated from cooperative groups. It is these producers who are at the mercy of local buyers (sometimes known as coyotes) who utilise their strengthened position to take coffee from the producers at a much lower price than it is worth before selling on to an exporter. Not only does this mean the income potential from coffee is very low for the producer, the quality potential of the crop can be lost with careless handling.

This was until our import partners, Falcon, set up the Blueprint program in the region of Jaen in Cajamarca focused on bringing about greater financial transparency for farmers in the region. To make this happen, a warehouse was set up to collect parchment coffee directly from the producers. This coffee was then sampled by a stringent QC team who would assign the sample a cupping score and it was on this basis alone that a price was determined for the producer who would receive the money on the same day. This is a pretty revolutionary initiative in this area and has seen producers receiving fair prices that have often doubled those on the local market. Not only has this brought about a more sustainable way of trading coffee in the area, it has also meant farmers are more willing to forge longer term relationships knowing their coffee will be assessed on its own merits. The initiative now incorporates over 400 local producers and Maximandro is one of them. His farm is situated in a unique micro climate and despite the fairly good altitude, his washed coffee has traditionally been lower scoring in comparison to that of his neighbours. With the assistance of the Blueprint initiative, it has been identified that processing Maximandro’s coffee naturally will be more suited to it’s inherent profile helping the lots he produces to attain a higher cup score and therefore a better price. We have always purchased washed coffee from this program so it was super interesting to cup a natural and we were delighted to find it blew us away on the tasting table. Historically, Peruvian coffees have presented us with a concern over shelf life due to the challenging logistics of moving coffee out of this mountainous area – couple that with a natural process and, on paper, we would probably have given this coffee a month or so upon landing before it started to show aged characteristics. Not Maximandro’s lot, it is impeccably clean and complex with amazing sweetness and juicy notes of strawberry with a funky orange-wine like flavour and hints of dried mango. Not one to be missed!