Peru Espinoza Natural

This particular lot of coffee comes from select smallholder farmers in the Alto Pirias community in the more and more famous Chirinos district in San Ignacio, Cajamarca. We named this lot after the family members who grew it: the Espinoza’s.

Natural processing in Peru is still quite rare, with very few producers experienced or consistent enough to invest in the method year after year. The Espinoza family have been farming coffee for 3 generations. We heard stories about how back in the 70’s there were no roads built to transport the beans and they all had to walk several hours along with mules to get to the nearest biggest town where buyers would receive the bags and pay for them. Alto Pirias has upped the game in quality natural processed coffee in Cajamarca but this is very recent. Up until 5 to 7 years ago you could only find washed coffees, still the king processing method in Peru.
A test introduced with a few farmers to process small batches of coffee with the outer layer on led to a great success in terms of quality and quickly the word spread across town. Although still very small percentage of the Chirinos production is natural coffee, the interest from local and international buyers has made farmers more ambitious about cultivating coffee this way, especially in the Alto Pirias town, where you can find many tarps and drying structures colored red and yellow from their caturras drying in their full cherries.