This complex, elegant but juicy cup starts with cherry cordial before a burst of white grape and then a squeeze of tangerine.
Pedro Flores’ farm sits in the small colonia of Villa Rosario, a short drive east of Caranavi. He is part of the Sol De La Mañana project, run by the Rodriguez family, which supports small producers through hands-on training in coffee agronomy. Through this programme, Pedro has learned how to replant his land and manage his coffee trees more methodically, improving both quality and consistency from year to year.
A key part of this focus on quality is harvesting. To ensure only the ripest cherries are picked, producers within the Sol De La Mañana programme will often harvest the same plants seven or eight times over the course of the season - far more passes than are typical in many other coffee-producing regions. While incredibly labour-intensive and yielding smaller volumes with each pass, this careful approach plays a huge role in achieving exceptional quality. One consequence, however, is that individual deliveries from producers in Bolinda are often too small to be processed separately, so cherries from multiple farms are combined and processed together.
You may also notice an unfamiliar term in the processing method for this coffee: Mosto. Mosto is a Spanish word used to describe fresh fruit juice before fermentation - the same root that gives us the English word must in winemaking. In coffee processing, it refers to the liquid produced during fermentation, and here it plays a central role.
The process begins with an initial batch of coffee, which is depulped and fermented in a closed tank before being rinsed and moved to raised beds to dry. During this fermentation, the liquid released (the mosto) is carefully collected, with its pH and microbial activity closely monitored and managed. A second batch of freshly depulped coffee is then introduced to this collected mosto, allowing fermentation to begin with an active, already fermenting environment. Once the remaining mucilage has broken down, the coffee is rinsed and dried as usual. Using these fresh, fermenting juices effectively jump-starts the process and helps to develop the complex, juicy flavours that make coffees like this so distinctive.
- Country: Bolivia
- Region: Yungas
- Municipality: Caranavi
- Town: Copacabana
- Farm: Villa Rosario
- Altitude: 1,500 m.a.s.l.
- Farm size: 2 hectares
- Producer: Pedro Flores
- Varietal: Caturra & Catuai
- Processing: Mosto Washed