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's part of Sol de la Mañana – the Rodriguez family's producer mentoring programme, which provides hands-on training in coffee agronomy to smallholders across the region. Through it, Pedro has learnt to replant his land more strategically and manage his plants with a consistency and rigour that simply wasn't common practice here before the programme existed.
To ensure only the ripest cherries make it off the tree, Sol de la Mañana producers typically do seven or eight harvesting passes across their plants throughout the season – far more than most producers anywhere in the world. It's labour-intensive work that yields smaller amounts each time, but the payoff is quality you can taste. The flip side is that each individual delivery ends up being quite small – too small, in most cases, to process as a standalone lot. So instead, cherry from the Villa Rosario producers is combined and processed together at the Rodriguez family's mill in Caranavi.
You might notice something unfamiliar in the processing details for this coffee: mosto washed. Here's what that means. Mosto is a Spanish word for fresh fruit juice – specifically before fermentation takes hold. It's the same root as the English winemaking term "must." In practice, the process works like this: two batches of coffee run in sequence. The first is depulped, fermented in a closed tank, then rinsed and sent to the drying beds as a standard washed lot. The liquid from that fermentation – the mosto – is carefully saved, with its pH and microbial activity monitored throughout. When the second batch is depulped, that live, already-fermenting juice is added directly to it. The active cultures give the fermentation an immediate head start, helping to break down the remaining pulp more efficiently and, it seems, encouraging the development of the complex, fruit-forward flavours that make these lots 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
- ESPRESSO RECIPE
- Dry dose: 17.5g
Time: 30 - 32 sec
Wet weight: 36 g
FILTER RECIPE - Suggested method: V60
Dry dose: 15g
Water: 250ml/ 97°C
Time: 3 - 4 mins
We omniroast our beans to suit any brew method. To find the method that suits your kit, check out our Brew Guides.
Producer Stories
