Doña Esperanza - Anoxic Washed - Gesha

Roast Profile: Light

Filter roast

Notes of: Sparkling Lemon, Floral, Fizzy

• Variety: Gesha
• Process: Anoxic Semi-Washed
• Altitude: 1900 MASL

 About this coffee

Doña Esperanza is not an 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 of age to do any more work.

Though Doña does not live on 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.

This wonderful anoxic semi-washed coffee comes to us through our partnership with LaREB and the amazing work they do to work with producers like Doña and the Esperanza family.

What makes 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 is 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 a closed vessel reduced the ‘fermentation profile’ while bringing forward the inherent terroir character. The heirloom cultivar was just an added perk.

Sometimes, most 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 the farm gate.

*Our coffee is freshly roasted each Monday and orders are dispatched on Wednesday and Friday with Royal Mail 24. Please allow 1-2 business days for your order to arrive.