COMMUNIDAD TAYPIPLAYA • BOLIVIA • TROPICAL PEACH & SWEET WINE

Communidad Taypiplaya is a coffee farming/producing cooperative effort started by Agricafe in Bolivia to increase the volume of specialty coffee export in the country.

Agricafe was started in 1986 by Pedro Rodriguez, the owner of multiple high caliber specialty farms in Bolivia. He saw a distinct lack of Bolivian coffee in the specialty market, and wanted to create more representation. Through Agricafe, Pedro has helped farmers across the country develop infrastructure to produce high quality specialty coffee on a large scale.

Smallhold farmers grow a regional blend of coffee varieties (primarily Bourbon, Typica, and Caturra) and deliver the cherries to the Buena Vista Coffee Mill (owned by Agricafe and the Rodriguez family) in La Paz. The cherries are fermented for 42 hours in open air tanks and washed, left to dry on drying beds for 4-5 days, and then finish the drying process in a mechanical dryer. A mechanical dryer is essentially a massive coffee roaster that is operated at lower temperatures to speed up the drying process of coffee beans. Where the average washed coffee would take up to two weeks to reach the right moisture content on drying beds, a mechanical dryer can reach those metrics in less than 7 days. Mechanical dryers are pretty rare in the specialty coffee scene, as they are hard to master and have a high potential for degrading the flavors of the coffee.

They are typically seen in the commodity market, and are usually only used to increase the rate of production, and in turn raise profits. However, with better infrastructure becoming available to specialty farmers, it’s possible that the specialty market might see mechanical dryers becoming much more popular. 

Tasting notes: Hot cocoa, tropical peach, dessert wine