Valentín Choquehuanca Organic

This coffee is packed in jute sacks lined with PVC Grainpro bags – an airtight storage system that preserves aroma and freshness for longer, while also allowing the coffee to breathe naturally.

A three-time Cup of Excellence finalist, Valentín Choquehuanca bought his farm in the small village of Loayza in 1990. The ten hecares of land - recommended to him by some friends - were already planted out with two hectares of coffee, to which Valentín added a further hectare of Caturra trees. The farm extends over steep, fertile hillside in Bolivia’s Caranavi region, north-east of La Paz, and is also planted with lime and mandarin trees.

Valentín, who is 35 years old, works the farm with the help of his wife and, during the school holidays, their two children - Soledad and Kevin. The coffee grows in the shade of indigenous ‘Inga’ trees and is fully organic certified. The whole farm totals some 10,000 coffee trees.

Harvest on the farm runs from June until September, when the ripe cherries are picked by hand. The coffee is fully washed at a local processing centre, and machine-dried until it reaches 12% humidity. It is then hand picked once again to remove any defects.

Valentín’s coffee took third place in the 2009 Cup of Excellence, and also reached the final in 2004 (9th place) and 2005 (15th).

Cupping Date: 

16 December 2011

Cup: 

Clean

Sweetness: 

Ripe

Acidity: 

Bright Elegant

Mouthfeel: 

Smooth

Flavour: 

Floral Tropical Fruit Papaya

Overall: 

Elegant, bright and sweet with some delicious notes of papaya and tropical fruit, and ever so slightly floral.