Doña Esperanza Reyes
La Unión, Nariño
~1900 masl
Full semiwashed Gesha
Anoxic in-cherry fermentation. 24 h. Closed tank dry mass fermentation. 96 h. No temperature control.
Sun dried in greenhouse.
2nd generation coffee grower. ~55 years old.
Family farm. Doña Esperanza is the CFO, her siblings do the work.
Story:
Doña Esperanza is not the everyday coffee grower. Her project is a family farm, managed by her brother Mauro; her sister Margarita and her brother Leo are also involved as workers. Her father, Don Rafael, is the spiritual leader of the group, as he is not in age to do any more work.
She does not live in the farm, and her main business is actually selling fertilisers in La Unión. Her profits are invested in the farms, improving both cultivars and equipment. Doña Esperanza also runs Coomerciacafé, an associative purchase point where her husband and some friends are involved.
What makes a coffee good? Is it the terroir, the variety, the process? Is it a combination of all those factors, or just the virtuosity of the producers?
Our guess is that the genetics of the cultivar are really good.
Doña Esperanza knows the right people in many regions, and she probably got good seeds. This is probably the biggest harvest of her first small plot to date. We know they have been struggling with nutrition and pest control. So besides the cultivar, that distinctive taste comes from the processing.
In 2019, they invested in a new stainless steel fermentation tank to increase control in their fermentations. All of their coffees started shining right away. Castillo, Colombia, Sidra, Gesha.
Regardless of the cultivar, we found tons of complexity and a sparkling character in all of them. Why? The in-husk resting combined with longer fermentations in closed vessel reduced the ‘fermentation profile’ while bringing forward the inherent terroir character. The heirloom cultivar was just a added perk.
Sometimes, most of producers are luckier than they are virtuous. In this case, they did not leave much to chance. Neither processing, nor selling an exporting. Doña Esperanza always looks after her coffees beyond farm gate.
