Relationship

We’ve relied on Café Imports for a lot of different coffees we had in the roastery (coincidentally for our first Ecuadorian, Finca Maputo was another Cafe Imports relationship) —and they delivered once again. After cupping more than 20 competition-level samples to replace our last showstopper, Fausto’s lot felt downright “weird” at first sip—but in the best possible way. After tasting more and more half the team fell head-over-heels; the rest -maybe not as enthusiastic- still couldn’t deny the sweetness–acid balance.

Just as we decided, the coffee sold out. Josh from Café Imports’ worked the phones, freed up a couple reserved bags, and Finca La Carolina landed in our roastery.

Country

Ecuador’s coffee story is smaller in volume than its neighbors but deep in potential: high-elevation Andean farms, coastal influences, and pockets of cloud forest create distinct growing zones. Coffee came to Ecuador in the middle of the 19th century, but it  didn’t become a major commercial venture in Ecuador until the late 1920s, when the cacao industry was threatened by disease—even then, coffee has largely remained an afterthought to the national economy, and production dropped greatly during the price crises of the 1990s and in the early 2000s. Due to the country’s location on the Equator, the coffee needs to be harvested throughout the year. A branch will often contain all stages of the coffee’s developmental cycle in one: green coffee, ripe coffee, and blossoms side by side. This forces a farmer to hold some coffee, while processing and harvesting enough for export, and it also leads to higher labor costs due to the extended picking cycle.

One of the most interesting developments to happen in Ecuadoran soil is the appearance of a new cultivar, called Sidra. A cross between a Bourbon and a Typica variety (themselves genetically relatively closely related), these coffees can express a very unique fruity, floral characteristics. When grown at higher altitudes and processed meticulously, these coffees stand out on the cupping table, and have the potential to bring Ecuador into the spotlight as a specialty-producing country.

Source: (Cafe Imports, n.d.), Webpage