Eli Espinoza, Peru | Natural | Mixed Varietal

“Eli Espinoza is the owner of 4 hectares of coffee in the village of las Pirias in Chirinos. Elí has a few parcels of land spread across the village, some planted mostly with typica, others with caturra and bourbon (only a small section has geishas). Elí processes all his coffee at his house, which sits at 1800masl and his farms are all between 1800 and 2000masl. Eli came to the area as a teenager looking for work on farms, and he started out picking coffee in the village. After a while he was able to buy his own land, a house and started working to produce his own coffee.

The coffee was washed and floated, before undergoing a skin drying process under shade for one day. The coffee was then moved to a solar drying tent, where it dried under controlled conditions for 45 days. Chirinos is a district in the province of San Ignacio and is one of the most well-known areas for quality coffee in Peru. Chirinos is well connected to nearby cities, with new roads and a thriving town, which serves as a hub for coffee buying and trade. Whilst the coffee landscape in Chirinos is still dominated by middlemen and FTO certifications, there is a growing interest in specialty coffee and some of the biggest cooperatives in the area have been promoting quality for a number of years. However, for those producers that aren’t members of coops, of which there are many, there is still little access to market and little support to invest in their farms and improve quality. There are a number of villages across Chirinos which have ideal growing conditions for coffee, with altitudes above 1700masl, and many producers still have old pure Arabica varieties. We see huge potential for quality improvement in Chirinos, with small changes and investments producers can escape low market prices which rarely cover the cost of production and find a market for their coffee that pays well above the market with quality incentives.”