Decaf Valle del Santuario |
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 San Ignacio, Peru
Natural Mountain Water Process Decaffeination • Certified Organic • Shade-Grown Direct from the high, jungled farms of our partners in San Ignacio, this naturally decaffeinated lot offers sweet, syrupy notes of chocolate, plum, spice, and vanilla above a smooth, round body. View Map. |
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$12.25
(per 12 oz bag) | ||
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Some of the best coffees in the world are in one of the remotest parts of the world; the jungles of northern Peru. To visit our partners there, Kim Elena and I had to make quite a journey. First to Lima, then an hour-long plane ride to the city of Chiclayo. From Chiclayo, we drove north on the only paved road that gives access to remote Northern Peru, over high Andean mountain passes and through plains and canyons. About halfway through that five-hour ride I discovered the car I was in had no foot brake; the guy was an expert with downshifting and the parking brake. It was a long ride. Finally, we made our first stop, in the city of Jaen. Around Jaen, you leave the pavement and keep heading north for hour after hour over dirt roads to reach San Ignacio and finally our destination, Alta Ihuamaca, which sits in a little valley that nobody has gotten around to naming. By the time we got there, we had been traveling for days—it’s one of the most remote places I have ever visited. It’s really the frontier of great coffee.  Alta Ihuamaca and the valley with no name are in the jungled mountains of Peru’s far north—just a few kilometers from the Ecuadorian border. They are way off the grid, with no electricity, and the houses are handmade marvels of adobe and wood. Along with K.C. O’Keefe, our friend in Peru, we have identified this valley as having some of the most extraordinary coffees in South America. Our Peruvian coffee last year came from various producers in and around this valley, and this year we’ve decided to sharpen our focus on just five communities in the heart of the valley. We’ve established a plan to cup the coffees of each farmer in this valley separately, farm by farm, lot by lot. This will allow us to do two things: find and reward the farmers that are producing really extraordinary coffee, and discover the real essence of coffees from this remote area. It’s really exciting, both for us and for the producers. We are thrilled to discover such a treasure in such a distant place, and the farmers are excited to make their debut on the world stage of great coffee for the first time. It’s a big deal for everyone.  Farms in this valley are incredible—perched on the steep sides of the lush, jungled mountains—and have everything going for them: high altitude; cool, breezy weather with plenty of rain; fertile soil; and many of the heirloom coffee varieties we seek. The farmers are proud of their farms and of their skills in picking, processing, and drying their coffees (drying is a particularly formidable task in this misty climate), and as we toured we learned lots of the details of the coffee process here. These farmers are really passionate about producing incredible-quality organic coffees in harmony with the natural environment, and they are proud of the forest preserve that surrounds their little valley. So proud that, when we talked about what to name the coffee from the valley with no name, the farmers decided to call it Valle del Santuario, or Sanctuary Valley.  The coffees of Valle del Santuario are extraordinarily crafted Peruvian coffees. The high altitude creates coffees of incredible clarity and flavor, and the heirloom Typica variety grown in this region produces sweet, complex, cherry-almond scented, and chocolate-like coffees. These farmers have done extraordinary work, and the resulting coffee is extraordinary, too. We know you will love it. And, we’ve been able to source enough coffee from this area to produce a decaf Valle del Santuario, too! It’s an incredible development in Northern Peruvian coffee, and it will change the way you think about coffee from this region. Exciting indeed.-Peter
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