Peru has always possessed good potential to produce quality coffee. The “terroir” for coffee is excellent, altitudes, soils, climate. A great PeruPeruvian coffees have Central American brightness but in a South American coffee flavor package overall. The good organic lots do have more of a “rustic” coffee character.: Organic Peru … you can get it anywhere More is a clean, wet-processed coffee with striking acidic brightnessA euphemistic term we use often to describe acidity in coffee. A bright coffee has more high, acidic notes. : A euphemistic term to describe acidity in coffee. A bright coffee has more high, acidic More, a clean cupClean cup refers to a coffee free of taints and defects. It does not imply sanitary cleanliness, or that coffees that are not clean (which are dirty) are unsanitary. It refers to the flavors, specifically More, moderate fruit or floralFloral notes in coffee exemplify the connection between taste and smell. Describing the taste of a specific flower is near impossible…we always default to “it tastes like it smells” which, admittedly, isn’t the most helpful. More hints, and good basic sweetnessSweetness is an important positive quality in fine coffees, and is one of five basic tastes: Sour, Sweet, Salty, Bitter, Savory (Umami). In coffee, sweetness is a highly desirable quality, and the green bean has More. The dominant aspect is the brightness.
Great Peru coffees are grown at exceptional altitudes, often above 1800 meters, and most of the plants are old TypicaA coffee cultivar; a cross between Typica and Bourbon, originally grown in Brazil: Mundo Novo is a commercial coffee cultivar; a natural hybrid between “Sumatra” and Red Bourbon, originally grown in Brazil. It was developed More varietyHibrido de Timor abbreviated HdT is the interspecies hybrid of C. Arabica and C. Canephora (Robusta) that was found in Timor Leste in the 1940s. It has been the bases of plant breeding for disease More. So with great altitude, great Typica varieties, and plenty of farmers to grow coffee, why is Peru not often found among first class coffees like small-farm ColombiaColombian coffee is highly marketed and widely available in the US. They have been largely successful at equating the name Colombian Coffee with “Good” Coffee. This is half-true. Colombian can be very balanced, with good More lots, or great high-grown GuatemalaGuatemalan coffee is considered a top quality coffee producer in Central America. Due to our proximity to Guatemala, some of the nicest coffees from this origin come to the United States. : Guatemalan growing regions More coffees?
Excellent Peruvian coffees can be hard to find. To some degree, the success of PeruPeruvian coffees have Central American brightness but in a South American coffee flavor package overall. The good organic lots do have more of a “rustic” coffee character.: Organic Peru … you can get it anywhere More coffee has been it’s downfall. OrganicGrown without the use of artificial fertilizers, herbicides, etc.: Organic coffee has been grown according to organic farming techniques, typically without the use of artificial fertilizers. Some farms have more local Organic Certification than the More certified Peru coffees are ubiquitous, always as close as your local Trader Joe’s, but the coffee is often poorly picked, processed and roasted, if it is even freshly roasted at all. We have been hard at work to establish stable relationships in Peru to gain access to the best coffees.
Peru is has usually been one of the cheapest origins for traders to source Organic certified coffees. It’s the “blender” coffee of Organics; it’s $4/Lb. roasted at Trader Joes, and it is threatening to lower prices for organic coffee farmers globally. The Peruvian coffee industry took note of the premium prices paid for Organic coffee, and realized they could produce Organic for less cost, focusing on quantity, not quality. They wanted to be to organic coffee what Vietnam is to robustaAteng is a common name for Catimor coffees widely planted in Sumatra and other Indonesia isles.: Ateng, with several subtypes, is a common name for Catimor coffees widely planted in Sumatra and other Indonesia isles. More.
There are stories of forests being clear-cut for organic coffee farming (it takes 3 years for an existing farm to become certified organic… not so with a “new” farm). I doubt the image of cutting down forests to grow organic product is the image consumers have in mind … then again, it’s organic and it’s $4 per lb. roasted. Well, you get what you pay for.
Peruvian offerings are hardly mentioned in William Ukers’ 1936 edition of All About Coffee and have not been well thought of due to an indelicate, blunted acidity that doesn’t have the refinement of Centrals. I think a lot of this is historical bias because Peru can produce some very fine coffees. In general, these coffees have Central American brightness but in a South American coffee flavor package overall. The good organic lots do have more of a “rustic” coffee character, but mostly because of poor processingThe removal of the cherry and parchment from the coffee seed.: Coffee is either wet-processed (also called washed or wet-milled) or dry-processed (also called wild, natural or natural dry, and we abbreviate it DP sometimes). More practices. Coffees with flavors like this might be pleasant enough, but sweetnessSweetness is an important positive quality in fine coffees, and is one of five basic tastes: Sour, Sweet, Salty, Bitter, Savory (Umami). In coffee, sweetness is a highly desirable quality, and the green bean has More and fruitedIn some coffee taster’s lexicon, “fruity” means the coffee is tainted with fruit, and “fruited” means a coffee is graced by positive fruit notes. We don’t exactly see the difference in terms of these two More notes can be unstable and might fade a few months after arrival in the US. We avoid these coffees.
It’s a lot of work to find a good lot among the abundance offered by brokers and other channels, although they can be found. We prefer to work in a more direct way to identify single farmers or small groups to import, and then we work with mills and exporters to get the coffee out intact. The journey overland, and processingThe removal of the cherry and parchment from the coffee seed.: Coffee is either wet-processed (also called washed or wet-milled) or dry-processed (also called wild, natural or natural dry, and we abbreviate it DP sometimes). More facilities in the hotter coastal zones can kill a coffee if care is not taken.
I have been to PeruPeruvian coffees have Central American brightness but in a South American coffee flavor package overall. The good organic lots do have more of a “rustic” coffee character.: Organic Peru … you can get it anywhere More a few times, back in 2006 and then again when I acted as head judge of Peru Competition 2008. I went to visit the Quillabamba area more recently, and others have taken over on the trips since then.
See our current selection of Peruvian Coffees at Sweet Maria’s.
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