Last month we had the delight of hosting Lisanne Oonk from Cultivar Coffees (the exporter we work with in Peru) at our roastery. We spent the day with Lisanne, chatting all things coffee, checking out our roasting site and spending time in our shops at Covent Garden and Borough Market. It was a super day which ended in a large tasting and talk with our team.
Lisanne started Cultivar with her business partner Theadros Mellink. The idea for the business started in their friendship and combined enthusiasm for coffee and interest in value chain development. Peru was an obvious country in which to try to progress their ideas of helping small-scale farmers access specialty roasters, and the roasters access great coffee. It has all the components that should contribute to terrific coffee: established cultivars, high altitude, good infrastructure and community support, ideal micro-climates, and a growing number of producers interested in improving the quality of their coffee and receiving a premium for that quality.
Up until about a decade ago, Peru had been known as a large, consistent, and well-organised organic coffee origin. The organic certification (amongst other certifications) has helped the country become one of the largest exporters of certified Arabica coffee. However, there weren’t many exporters focussing on specialty coffee. When Lisanne and Theadros started Cultivar, they spent many months establishing contacts and looking for producers to work with, as well as dry-millers and the supporting businesses needed to bring coffee to the specialty market. Cultivar now has two warehouses, one in Jaén, Cajamarca in the North, and the other more centrally located in La Merced, Junín. This is terrific progress given the company is only a few years old, and that it was just getting started as the pandemic took hold. Our very first coffee from Cultivar, Finca El Morito, was bought in 2020.
Peru is a country of mostly small farms, a good proportion of which would be around three hectares in size. Most of the farms have their own micro-beneficio where they process the coffee, before taking the parchment covered coffee to a buying point. There are choices at this point; some farmers are members of cooperative systems and will sell their coffee through the cooperative (especially those farmers who run organic systems), others will sell to private exporters like Cultivar. Cultivar tastes all the samples brought in by the farmers and combines the deliveries into single farm lots like Finca El Morito, and community or family lots, like Huabal.
We visited Cultivar last August and saw first-hand the impressive work they are doing to bring small farmers to the specialty market. The work they do really highlights to us the value of the local buyer and exporter. Cultivar has also set up a base in Europe, through which they import their coffee to help them access the micro and specialty roaster market. They have carved out a niche for themselves and as a result we have access to some wonderful coffees.
Look out for El Morito and Huabal on the counter in the Spring, and coffee from the Amoju Cooperative in our Organic Espresso later in the year. More information about Cultivar can be found at cultivarcoffees.com.
Monmouth x
