This natural caturra was produced by Elvis Choquehuanca and his mother, Carmela, whose farms (sitting at 1550 M.A.S.L) are located near the town of Copacabana. Since 2015, Elvis and his mother have taken part in the Sol de la Mañana Project - a training program for coffee producers in the Caranavi province to equip them with skills to elevate their coffee quality and volume in a sustainable way. This is the second coffee from Elvis that we purchased this year (the first being a natural process caturra) – here we taste ripe stone fruit and juicy tropical notes.
The Sol de la Mañana Project was set up by the Rodriguez family (Pedro and his children, Daniela and Pedro Pablo), a pillar of speciality coffee production in Bolivia. In 2014 a group of local producers approached the family requesting support and guidance on how to increase the quality and yield of their coffee. The family established the Project as a mentoring program to guide these producers through every step of coffee farming – from setting up their nurseries to the benefits of careful pruning and using fertiliser. Pedro Pablo also visits each producer’s farm every month to provide feedback on their farming practices, and they also benefit from weekly engineer visits.
The program has been an undeniable success. Producers have substantially increased both the quality and volume of cherries produced every harvest (in many cases, from 10 to 25 bags of cherries per hectare of their land), translating to a higher income, year on year. The members of the project also have the opportunity to sell their coffee cherries to the Rodriguez family. Each producer receives 70% of the price sold for their coffee.
The Rodriguez family takes a precise approach to processing, which is undertaken at their own wet and dry mills. This means quality assurance is built into the Sol de la Manana Project from start to finish. After receiving the ripe cherries from producers, they add them to a tank filled with fresh water, which removes dust and debris. The under-ripe (i.e., lesser dense) cherries float to the surface, where they can be skimmed off. The remaining cherries are subjected to a controlled slow-drying process in a mechanical cacao drying machine for 100 hours (at a maximum of 35°C). Once the coffee reaches the desired moisture level, they are sent to the Rodriguez’s dry mill built for milling, grading and sorting.
This is our second year working with the Rodriguez family, and this caturra is one of five lots that we purchased. It was harvested between June and September 2024 and landed in the UK in January 2025.
After cupping the coffee with Daniela Rodriguez at their lab in La Paz, we agreed the Free on Board price with the Rodriguez family (that is, the price of the green coffee delivered to the port of Arica in Chile). We paid the Rodriguez family directly for the coffee, with the support of Falcon who helped us ship the coffee to the UK.
If you're not sure which coffee is for you, or you want to try them all, then our discovery pack is just what you need.
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