Rosalio Gutierrez - Natural

FARM: CHALLWANCHAYOC

LOCATION: NARANJAYOC, CUSCO, PERU

ALTITUDE: 1750 MASL

VARIETY: BOURBON

PROCESSES: NATURAL

Tasting Notes: Nectarine, Dark Honey, Creme Brulee

This sundried, bourbon varietal comes to us from Cusco, Peru and the Valle Inca cooperative. Located in Calca (specifically the remote subregions Yanatile and Lares) in the south of Peru, they launched in 2014 and Red Fox Coffee Merchants have been buying coffee from them ever since. Where, at first, Valle Inca yielded small quantities that struggled to make the grade quality-wise, they’re now one of their biggest vendors in all of Peru, producing enviable quality.

Leader Prudencio (Jose Prudencio Saenz Vargas) is a Calca native who brings former experience as a bank loan officer to his work running Valle Inca—fiscal experience of critical importance to Valle Inca and the surrounding community, most of whom are smallholders averaging just 2-3 hectares each. When he got started he was new to coffee production, but his extreme quality focus has always been key to the group’s success.

He helped Valle Inca producers move from drying coffee on plastic mats to raised beds, worked with Red Fox’s Head of QC in Peru, Tibed Yujra, to improve drying, fermentation, and storage practices, and was the first producing partner of ours to implement GrainPro in storing parchment. He meets farmers where they are in the isolated reaches of Yanatile and Lares and works with them to produce the best coffee they possibly can.

Rosalio is a young producer from the Valle Inca cooperative, only 38 years old. He and his wife Gladys cultivate the 10 hectares they share, only 2.75 of which are dedicated to coffee production. The rest of their land is for products for their own consumption, including pastures for cattle and old-growth forest.

The name of the farm is Challwanchayoc—challwan in Quechua means trout and chayoc means stream, so Challwanchayoc: "River of Trout.” The work on their farm is arduous and complex, but Rosalio says that a good fried trout with bituca, rice, and salad definitely improves the day.