Peru La Vicuña

La Vicuña isn't one farm. It's an alliance of eleven cooperatives spread across Amazonas and Cajamarca in northern Peru — roughly three thousand smallholder families — pooling their coffee through a modern mill the cooperatives own together. Through the ElevaFinca project they're working on farm renovation and agroforestry: the slow, unglamorous work of replanting and shade that decides what a region's coffee tastes like a decade from now.

Traceability here is community-level rather than single-farm, and that's the point. The interesting thing about this coffee is how many people had to get it right. Washed, fermented twenty-three hours, then dried on patios for eight days. Castillo, Caturra, Catuaí and Bourbon, grown between 1,300 and 2,000 metres.

It cups at 84 — sweet, balanced, full-bodied. Full enough to take milk without thinning out, which makes it the rare community lot that works as an everyday espresso as well as a batch brew. Two bags landed in Los Angeles. When they're gone, they're gone.

Tasting notes: baking chocolate, orange, biscuit

Producer: ElevaFinca — an alliance of eleven cooperatives
Region: Amazonas & Cajamarca, Peru
Process: Washed, 23-hour ferment, 8 days patio-dried
Altitude: 1,300–2,000 MASL
Varieties: Castillo, Caturra, Catuaí, Bourbon
Cupping score: 84
Importer: Onyx Coffee