How one tree that survived a disease outbreak on a Cajamarca farm went on to win Cup of Excellence Peru, and why nobody can agree on what it is.
In 1997, a farmer in northern Peru noticed something odd growing on her land. She left it to grow for over a decade. Then a fungal disease swept through the farm, and that one strange tree came through it. Eight years later, it won the biggest prize in Peruvian specialty coffee.
That's the short version. The long version takes a bit more telling.
A tree that didn't belong
In 1997, Grimanés Morales Lizana spotted an unusual coffee plant on her farm, La Lúcuma, in the San Ignacio province of Cajamarca, northern Peru. It didn't look like anything else she was growing. Different leaf shape, different structure. She didn't think much of it.
For 14 years, that tree quietly grew alongside her Bourbon, Caturra and Catimor. Then in 2011, a fungal disease called "ojo de pollo", caused by Mycena citricolor, tore through her plantation. It's a nasty one: it creates round, sunken lesions on leaves and coffee cherries, eventually causing them to drop. In wet, high-altitude conditions like Cajamarca's, it can do serious damage to a farm.
Grimanés's plantation was badly hit. The odd tree survived.
This is where the story shifts. Grimanés began propagating from the surviving plant. She named the resulting varietal "Marshell", a word constructed from the letters of her family members' names and surnames, including Marcelino's. The spelling varies across the industry: you'll see Marshel, Marshall and Marshell. We're using Marshell, which is how the varietal is most commonly identified in Peru.
Cup of Excellence: the moment everything changed
Fast forward to October 2019. The Alliance for Coffee Excellence held its third Cup of Excellence competition in Jaén, Peru. An international panel of cuppers from Japan, South Korea, the US, Australia, Hong Kong, Russia, the UAE and Peru evaluated 209 submissions from 11 growing regions, eventually narrowing them down to 21 winning lots.
At the top of the pile? Grimanés Morales Lizana, with a washed Marshell from La Lúcuma. Score: 92.28. She beat a Geisha blend in second place (91.44) and a Catuai in third (91.40). She also became the first woman to win Cup of Excellence Peru, after Juan Heredia in 2017 and Dwight Aguilar in 2018.
The specialty coffee world sat up. A varietal almost nobody had heard of, from a small family farm, had beaten a Geisha blend to first place.
So what actually is Marshell?
This is where things get properly geeky. And a little murky.
The prevailing view, and the one most widely repeated, is that Marshell is a natural mutation of Bourbon. It looks different from Bourbon, but it shares enough visual characteristics that the mutation theory is plausible, and most reporting on the 2019 competition described it as an unidentified Bourbon mutation. The official Cup of Excellence record, though, lists the winning variety as Costa Rica 95.
That points to the other main theory. Costa Rica 95 is a Catimor-group cultivar developed from Caturra and Timor Hybrid 832/1, which means a trace of Robusta in its lineage. Commercial genetic testing has pointed the same way. UK roaster Full Court Press has reported testing by RD2 Vision that identified its Marshell sample as a rare form of Catimor, and exporter Falcon Coffees has reported analysis identifying Marshell as Costa Rica 95. Those are quite different claims from "natural Bourbon mutation".
None of this is settled yet. Those results come from individual samples, not a peer-reviewed study, and different farms could be growing genetically different trees under the same name. That's normal for a varietal discovered on a small farm in a remote region. Peru has no national body dedicated to developing coffee varieties, the way Colombia has Cenicafé or Costa Rica has ICAFE.
For coffee geeks, this uncertainty is part of the appeal. Marshell is a varietal whose story is still being written.
What does Marshell taste like?
This is the part for anyone who'd rather drink the stuff than debate its family tree.
Marshell coffees from Cajamarca tend towards a profile that's rich, sweet and balanced. Think caramel sweetness, warm spice, stone fruit and citrus that can range from subtle to electric depending on the producer and processing method. The acidity is typically clean and well structured. One thing we've noticed again and again is how much the cup changes as it cools, starting warm and inviting, then opening up into more fruit and spice.
Marshell has kept turning up in the competition results since 2019. Grimanés placed ninth with La Lúcuma in 2021, and in 2024 two lots that included Marshell finished 17th and 21st, both scoring above 87 points.
Farmers are planting it for its cup quality and for its reputation for resilience, which started with that one tree surviving ojo de pollo. That resilience hasn't been measured in proper varietal trials yet. If Marshell does turn out to be Costa Rica 95, it's worth knowing that World Coffee Research lists Costa Rica 95 as susceptible to leaf rust and ojo de gallo in Costa Rica.
Why Cajamarca matters
Marshell's story is tied to where it's grown. Cajamarca is Peru's biggest coffee-producing region, with about 22% of national production according to the USDA, and it does well in competition too: four of the top five lots at Cup of Excellence Peru 2019 came from Cajamarca. San Ignacio, the province where Marshell was discovered, is part of a belt of dramatic, steep terrain along Peru's northern border with Ecuador, the kind of landscape where growing coffee is hard work.
Altitude here sits between 1,600 and 2,000 metres. Infrastructure is minimal. Many farms lack electricity. Roads are rough at best. Processing coffee in these conditions takes real effort. The climate helps: cool nights, warm days and plenty of rainfall, which all play a part in the sweetness, clarity and complexity of Cajamarca coffees.
Producers in the region have been quick to adopt Marshell. Other farmers saw how Grimanés's trees performed and started planting it themselves, and it's now grown on farms across San Ignacio and Jaén, including in La Coipa. For farmers dealing with coffee leaf rust, ojo de pollo and Cercospora, a varietal with a reputation for resilience that still cups this well is a big draw.
Nima Juarez: Marshell at El Roble
Which brings us to the Marshell we roasted from Nima Juarez.
Nima Juarez farms three hectares at El Roble, in La Coipa, a small district in San Ignacio province. At 1,720 metres above sea level, it's prime Marshell territory. Nima lives at the centre of the farm with her husband, their two children, and their dog Botas (named, charmingly, for his habit of eating shoes).
The farm is planted with Catuai, Bourbon, Catimor and, increasingly, Marshell. Nima's been deliberately shifting her planting away from Catimor, which is easier to grow but doesn't cup as well. She's clear-eyed about the economics: lower quality, commodity-grade coffee won't provide for her family. Great quality coffee can.
That thinking shows in the details. The family recently invested in brand new raised drying beds, a big commitment for a farm of their size, and one that gives much better airflow and more even drying than traditional methods. Cherries are hand-picked at peak ripeness, depulped, fermented, washed and then carefully dried.
Nima is part of the Gallitos de las Rocas producer group in La Coipa. The group takes its name from the Andean cock-of-the-rock, Peru's national bird, known locally as tunki. The male is outrageously coloured, with a brilliant scarlet crest and vivid orange plumage, and it's one of the most striking birds in the Andean cloud forests.
The group works with Origin Coffee Lab through their Solidario programme, which gives small-scale producers training, financing and direct feedback on coffee quality. For farmers like Nima, working without the scale or infrastructure of larger operations, that means access to money and advice they'd otherwise struggle to get.
Resourcefulness at altitude
What strikes you about El Roble is how self-sufficient the family has become. Without mains electricity or reliable infrastructure, they've found their own solutions: a natural spring on the farm provides drinking water, and they grow banana, cassava and other food plants alongside their coffee. By the drying beds, there's a small hive of native stingless bees, which make honey and pollinate the coffee plants at the same time.
In the cup: Nima Juarez's Marshell
Nima's Marshell was a silky coffee. There was a sweet cola quality up front, think caramel and warm spice, that gave way to a delicate pomegranate on the aftertaste. It rewarded a little patience as it cooled. If you're brewing Marshell at home, we like a French press: 32g of coffee to 500ml of water at 96°C, steeped for 4 to 5 minutes. Give it time to cool a little before your first sip.
Taste Marshell for yourself. Irene Herrera's washed Marshell from La Mandarina, also in La Coipa: tangerine, strawberry fondant and brown sugar.
From one tree
Most disease-resistant cultivars in the Catimor family have a reputation for trading cup quality for resilience. If Marshell does turn out to be a Catimor, it makes a strong case against that reputation. It also came from a farmer paying attention. Grimanés Morales Lizana noticed something different, watched it survive when the rest of her plantation struggled, and had the instinct to grow more of it.
Nearly three decades after she first spotted that odd-looking tree, Marshell is one of the most talked-about varietals in Peruvian coffee, and the genetic research is still catching up with what producers have learned from growing it.