Anita Julca Sanchez - Peru

 Anita Julca Sanchez's Peru coffee is precision-washed, allowing for a flavor profile of sweet, fruit tones like green apple and marzipan. Enjoy a unique cup of coffee from a celebrated Peruvian producer.

Roaster - BLACK RAIN

Producer - Anita Julca Sanchez

Process - Washed

Varietal - Caturra

Origin - Peru

Notes - Green Apple and Marzipan

From the importer - 

Anita and Daniel own 3 hectares of coffee land in the El Diamante village of San Jose de Lourdes district. They cultivate both yellow and red caturra varieties at an altitude of over 1900masl. Some of their relatives also have coffee farms in the area and they work together as a family to manage them. Each family member has their own land, including Anita and Daniel, but it is Daniel's son Roger who oversees the picking, processing and drying of the coffee.

The cherries are picked when they are as ripe as possible and then put in bags for overnight pre-fermentation. The next day, they are depulped and fermented for another 24 to 36 hours depending on the weather. This process of macerating the cherries and extending the fermentation gives the coffee a distinctive fruity flavor that goes well with the sharp citric acidity from the high elevation. Roger then dries all his coffee in a greenhouse with good ventilation on a wooden patio lined with plastic. When the coffee reaches below 11% moisture content, Roger takes it down to Jaén where he delivers it to the Falcon Coffees Peru warehouse.

Alongside Honduras, Peru has historically been regarded as the discount Latin American origin of unremarkable and often unreliable quality. This reputation and its accompanying price discount are the results of supply chains focused on large volumes based on aggregated quality, built to serve roasters seeking value over remarkable coffee. This happens at the expense of Peruvian farmers who don’t reap the rewards of higher income through improved quality.

We believe that Peru has the potential to match up on quality to any of its origin counterparts in Latin America. We set out to prove this.

The altitude of the Andes combined with rich volcanic soils and tropical rainfall means that Peru

has the ideal topography and climate for producing high quality Arabica coffee. We identified the problem as post-harvest processing. Farmers had received little to no training on the chemistry and precision required to maximise the quality of their coffees. We realised that if we provided training that demanded attention to detail, we would need to offer the financial incentive to reward those farmers who made the effort. 

In 2018 Falcon Peru SARL was registered as an export company and we opened a small warehouse with QC lab in the northern coffee town of Jaen, Cajamarca. Farmers bring their dry parchment to the warehouse for quality analysis, some tasting their own coffees for the first time. They receive a cup score and an offer price immediately, which they can accept or refuse. In 2019 and 2020, on average Falcon paid double the commercial rate for parchment in Jaen. 

In 2018 we established Falcon Coffees Peru with an initial intake of partnerships with 35 farmers. These farmers were selected based on their potential and willingness to produce outstanding qualities, and most were based in an area called Huabal. 

As of 2022 Falcon Coffees Peru is

· 275 producers across 15 districts in Cajamarca.

· 3 producer associations.

· 10 full time employees, 50% female.

In 2022 we focussed on improving our operations and technical activities. This has allowed us to increase volumes and develop the in-house facilities at our dedicated warehouse space. As many smallholder producers lack on-farm drying infrastructure to dry their coffee properly, we also installed additional drying facilities close to the warehouse to enable producers to achieve optimum moisture levels and lock in cup quality that would otherwise be lost where coffee cannot be dried properly.

In the Autumn of 2022, Peru was selected as the first origin at which to begin conducting in depth field research into carbon emission at farm level as part of our Carbon Project. (https://www.falconcoffees.com/beginning-the-knowledge-transfer-project/)

From the end of October, we will continue training producers on best practice for fertiliser application as well as assist producers in diversifying varietals on their farms.

As Falcon controls the supply chain from farmer to your door, these coffees qualify for our Blueprint Project label, where we can provide economic transparency data for every household that provided you with the coffee you purchased.