Peru El Platanal

Buy Peru El Platanal here.

DIRECT TRADE PARTNER
Alcibiades Melqui
Finca El Platanal

REGION
Jaén

ELEVATION
1765-1810 m

CULTIVARS
Catimor, Typica

HARVEST DATES
July-September 2021

LOOK FOR
Cocoa | Orange | Cola

We have been sourcing smallholder coffees from northern Peru for well over a decade. Until we started working with the team from Origin Coffee Lab back in 2015, however, we were rarely able to access coffees from specific villages, to say nothing of single farms.

In an area where the dominant approach is to blend coffees from thousands of smallholder farms indiscriminately to aggregate large volumes, Origin moved decisively in the opposite direction, pursuing a strategy of lot separation and quality-based differentiation that is deeply aligned with our own approach to sourcing. Origin shares our belief that bigger is not necessarily better when it comes to coffee, and small can be beautiful. By isolating coffees from single farms or small villages and presenting them separately, Origin is able to preserve what makes the great ones great and avoid adulterating them with coffees of lower quality from other growers and great and avoid adulterating them with coffees of lower quality from other growers and communities.  This positions Origin to seize opportunities in the specialty coffee market, command premium prices, and deliver more value to the smallholder growers it serves — quality-focused growers like Alcibiades Malqui.

Finca El Platanal is a half-hectare farm located at a soaring elevation in the heart of the Jaén, the region from which we have sourced most of our single-origins in Peru. This is the first single-origin lot we have purchased from El Platanal.