A floral, bright, and expressive coffee with a very clean white floral profile and a brilliant citrus acidity.
It is sweet and delicate like a soft fruit candy, with notes of orange marmalade and panela.
It has depth and balance, a true coffee delicacy. Perfect for enjoying slowly.
HISTORY
The Rosaspata farm is located in the Tablahuasi sector, in the district of Ocobamba, province of La Convención, Cusco region. At 2,400 meters above sea level, surrounded by dense vegetation and with permanent access to water for irrigation, the plot offers conditions that few farms in the area can provide. The only access is a rustic wooden bridge that crosses the river: a structure that the family rebuilds every year when the rains wash it away, and which they still cross daily to carry out their work.
Alina Milagros Solano Huaylla manages this two-hectare farm with a dedication that is reflected in every stage of the process. The harvest begins before dawn, taking advantage of the cool morning to advance with the collection, and does not end until dusk. It is a work rhythm that involves the entire family and that defines the identity of Rosaspata in the most complete sense of the word.
Alina is part of the Asociación Agraria Valle del Inca Cusco, VALLEINCA, an organization that groups specialty producers from the region and facilitates access to the international market for coffees of this profile. The alliance between the individual dedication of producers like Alina and the support of the association is what allows a coffee of such a small quantity — barely 200 kilograms available — to reach cups outside of Peru.
VARIETY AND PROCESS
The SL9 is a selection developed at the Scott Laboratories in Kenya in the 1930s, as part of a program seeking to identify trees with exceptional yield and outstanding cup quality. It was selected from a single tree of unknown origin, cataloged and studied alongside dozens of other selections from the same period. The problem was its agronomy: low productivity, susceptibility to coffee cherry disease. Scott Labs discarded it. It was not commercially viable.
How it arrived in Peru, no one knows for sure. At some point, by some route, the plant crossed the Atlantic and found the conditions it needed to thrive on the slopes of Cusco. Local producers called it "Inca Gesha" because of its intense floral profile —exotic, clean, difficult to classify— and so it was assumed for a long time. It had all the character of a Geisha: delicacy, expressiveness, that way of building a delicate cup. But a DNA analysis confirmed by independent laboratories, including RD2 Vision and World Coffee Research, revealed something different: it is not Geisha, nor Bourbon, nor anything known within the usual classifications. It belongs to the Ethiopian Legacy group, genetically close to K7 and Mibirizi. A variety that should not exist, that survived almost exclusively on the farms of Cusco, and that today produces some of the most unique coffees in Peru.
The process is washed. At the end of each harvest day, the cherries are washed to remove impurities and any floating cherries are discarded. They are then pulped and begin a 36-hour fermentation in the shade, at an average temperature of 18 °C. After this stage, the beans are washed to remove the mucilage from the parchment and are then transferred to raised beds, where they dry in the shade for 20 to 22 days until they reach 11% moisture. The coffee is stored in GrainPro bags to preserve its quality until shipment.
RECIPE
We use 18 grams of ground coffee and 310 grams of water at 93 °C. We do three pours. The first pour is 54 grams, we wait 45 seconds, and then we do two pours of 132 grams over a total time of 2'20".
