Peru Natural Huabal

In the Cup: Cocoa, pecan, fresh coffee cherry, and mellow cooked citrus flavors with winey acidity and mild candy-like sweetness.

Process: Natural

Farm: Finca Ecológica

Variety: Caturra

Elevation: 1850 MASL

Country: Peru

Harvest: May–October

High in the northeastern Andes of Peru, in the Huabal district of Cajamarca, Gilmer Cordova tends a 7-hectare farm his father Filadelpo planted back in 1990. Finca Ecológica lives up to its name — Gilmer grows his Caturra under the canopy of wild shade trees, fertilizes with compost and guano, and refuses herbicides altogether. At 1,850 meters above sea level, the cool nights and fertile Andean soil slow the cherries down and let real complexity build inside the bean. Every cherry here is picked ripe, by hand. It's the kind of detail-obsessed farming that turns a microlot into a microlot.

Going natural with this lot was a deliberate move — and you can taste why. Drying the cherries whole lets the fruit pass its sugars and winey acidity straight into the seed, which is exactly where that fresh coffee cherry note and mellow cooked citrus come from. Underneath all that fruit, the Caturra variety holds its ground with a steady backbone of cocoa and pecan and a soft, candy-like sweetness on the finish. It's a clean, organic, traceable expression of what young, innovative Peruvian growers like Gilmer are putting out right now — and it's a reminder of how far a single farm in Cajamarca can take you.