Eladio Chamba and his family cultivate three hectares of coffee on their farm––Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe––in southern Ecuador. The farm is planted with excellent varieties and sits at high elevations in an arid climate, which contributes to slow cherry maturation. Despite years of coffee production, Eladio and his family only started to produce specialty, washed coffees in 2015. We first purchased their coffee in 2016 after an introduction from Caravela Coffee, one of our sourcing partners in Ecuador. We've purchased Eladio’s coffee every year since, releasing it as a single-farm lot.

Ecuador’s specialty coffee market is small, competitive, and progressive. News about processing techniques that fetch high prices travels fast. On a trip in 2022, nearly every farm we visited carried out some kind of processing experiment on their coffee to differentiate themselves in this competitive landscape. Always eager to innovate, Eladio has continued experimenting with anaerobically fermenting coffee. This year, after the coffee was pulped it was sealed in a large, plastic drum outfitted with an airlock. After 40 hours of oxygen-free fermentation, the coffee is washed with clean water and dried on raised beds. The resulting coffee offers remarkably bright, clean tropical fruit flavors and a ripe orange brightness imparted by the fermentation method.