Ecuador continues to produce some of our favorite coffees each year. This is our second season working with Felipe's coffee, and it is once again impressive. In the cup we find delicate florality, ripe stone fruit, and strawberry.
Mejorado
Palanda, Zamora Chinchipe
1,600 masl
October, 2022
Hand picked at peak ripeness. Floated to further remove defects. Depulped. Wet fermented for 60 hours. Washed. Dried on raised beds for 20 days.
Thanks to his parents, Felipe has always been passionate about coffee. He planted his first trees when he was eight years old, and harvested his first cherries when he was 12. Because coffee has always been a crop that has generated income for his family, he takes great care and pride in its production. He first planted 7,000 Mejorado trees, and after seeing the quality potential and excellent results from those trees, he now has 14,000 of them. As such, we should start seeing a much larger production from Felipe in the next few years.
Mejorado is a very unique variety mainly grown in Ecuador. Though it is commonly misnamed Typica Mejorado, we now know—due to genetic testing by World Coffee Reseach—that it is actually a Bourbon variety cross-pollinated with an Ethiopian Landrace variety.
The cost of getting a coffee from cherry to beverage varies enormously depending on its place of origin and the location of its consumption. The inclusion of price transparency is a starting point to inform broader conversation around the true costs of production and the sustainability of specialty coffee as a whole.