The coffee for this lot came from a mix of Sol De La Mañana producers from the Uchamachi colonia. The largest contributors have both been in SdlM for 7 years - Jose Luis Mamani & Ricardo Uluri.
To ensure only the very ripest coffee cherries are picked, it's not uncommon for producers in the SDLM program to do 7 or 8 harvesting passes across their plants, many more than producers in other parts of the world do. This is very labour-intensive and yields smaller amounts each pass, but ensures great quality. The downside is that for each delivery of cherries from the SLDM producers in Bolinda, the lots are often too tiny to process separately and so instead, deliveries from all the producers are combined and processed together.
The traditional way to process coffee in Bolivia is via the Washed method, but the Los Rodriguez team have innovated and added an Anaerobic Fermentation stage which is done in stainless steel fermentation vessels. More commonly seen in breweries or wineries, these allow the absolute highest level of control in managing this process and enable the team to deliver incredibly consistent quality. Supported by the onsite lab and resident microbiologist, samples are taken and measured daily to monitor the fermentation.