Peru Las Etiopes

Peru offers the ideal conditions for producing coffee of the highest quality: high altitudes, excellent varieties, and organic farming practices. In recent years, especially, coffee growers have placed even greater emphasis on the quality of the product they are working with. Encouraged by financial bonuses offered by some of the important specialty coffee exporters, they have improved their processing and drying practices, while also replacing traditional crops with exotic varieties, such as Geisha.

One of the farms with a modern approach to coffee production is Las Etíopes, the origin of this truly special Geisha. Located in the village of El Porvenir in Jaén, Cajamarca, the farm covers an area of 7 hectares, at an altitude between 1,900m and 2,050m. In 2019, Las Etíopes was purchased by Simon Brown, one of the first partners with whom Pressco traveled to coffee-producing countries from the very beginning. After many years leading the Supply-Chain Department for a major importer, Simon chose to become independent, settling in Peru, where he married and started a family.

At the beginning of 2020, Simon planted the first coffee trees on the newly acquired farm, dedicating 2 hectares to exotic varieties such as Geisha, Wush-Wush, Sidra, and Heirloom (Ethiopian heritage varieties), and one hectare to traditional varieties, like Caturra and Bourbon.

The 3 hectares that are now cultivated with these precious coffee varieties were previously a mix of pastureland and coffee trees when Simon purchased the property. Although increasing climate change has led to more and more coffee farms being converted into different kinds of estates, Las Etíopes remains one of the few coffee farms in the area, surrounded by lush forest. Simon’s farm stands out for its heirloom crops, some unicorns on South American soil. The Ethiopian varieties were brought from the Jimma region of Ethiopia, with recent plantings of seeds from the Sidama and Yirgacheffe regions.

The rest of the property is covered by preserved ancestral forest, as Simon embraces an important principle: protecting the natural environment and integrating agriculture sustainably.

Because we share Simon’s principles, we selected this extraordinary Geisha for our portfolio. The coffee cherries were selectively harvested based on their ripeness and then floated in wooden tanks. In the next step, they were hulled and fermented in plastic barrels for 3-5 days. The coffee beans were then placed on covered raised beds to dry for approximately 10-14 days, depending on weather conditions, until they reached the optimal moisture level.