Ecuador - Chorora "Red Washed" Mejorado [25/26]

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

Light Roast Influence: We did a few test batches on this one - while there was a super intriguing coffee blossom note to be found at a lighter roast, we also couldn't shake genmaicha tea esq popped rice and green-y notes that didn't integrate with the cup. With a touch extra development, which naturally comes with some extra sugar browning - we found what we think is the best presentation of this coffee. The processing implies extreme funk but it actually roasts and cups like a more traditional (perhaps slightly extended ferm) washed coffee - testament to the skills of Olinka & René

Best Rested: 3-4 weeks

Filter: 64g/L, 93°C when fresh, 62g/L & 90°C when rested

Espresso: 18g/45g/24-30s - classic style

We're tasting: Sweet and sticky aromatics - stewed apple, chamomile and dried apricots. In the cup it's plush and elegant with clementine and nectarine notes hot, alongside cake-like bakewell tart (raspberry, frangipane, brown butter shortcrust pastry) and chamomile tea. The touch of extra development tips the Mejorado profile from white sugar to more butterscotch, and we find a soft florality throughout - apple blossom hot, dried jasmine cold.

Traceability

The Story

This is our second season buying from Chorora, one of two adjoining farms in Sozoranga, Loja, in southern Ecuador, owned and run by sisters Olinka and Diana Velez. Chorora is Olinka's, planted with several varieties including Mejorado, Wush Wush, Rosado and the Ethiopian landrace "Lupe Maria". Diana's grows only Sidra on her neighbouring farm, Yambamine, Both farms sit on a steep hillside surrounded by primary cloud forest looking south across the Macara valley toward Peru, and are crossed by a section of the old Inca road that once ran between Cusco and Quito. The land borders a dry forest reserve and is fed by springs that run down to the Macara river marking the Ecuador-Peru border.

Olinka returned to the family land in Loja in 2010 and took on a farm that had been abandoned for around forty years. From 2012 she planted a range of varieties to study how each behaved against local soils, disease and yield, and shared what she found with other producers in the area. Yambamine came later and was the project of Diana's husband, René (not to be confused with their son, also René, who is listed as a producer on this lot), who began planting there before his death after which Diana revived and expanded the farm. The two operations are now run together, with much of the processing and research shared across both sites.

Ecuador adopted the US dollar around the turn of the millennium. Dollarisation brought stability, but it removed something most coffee origins rely on - a weak local currency that keeps wages and inputs cheap against the dollar a buyer pays in. Ecuadorian producers earn and spend in the same currency their coffee is priced in, so their production costs sit among the highest of any origin. Competing on price is more or less off the table, and over the past two decades farms have been abandoned to the point that the country now imports more coffee than it grows. For producers who stayed, the response has been to focus on extreme quality and value-add rather than chase volume, and the Velez sisters have gone further with this than most. They were among the first in Ecuador to work with high technical intervention processing, including carbonic maceration and anoxic fermentation. They run an on-site laboratory where they isolate their own yeast and lactobacillus cultures, develop processing methods and cross cultivars to see what suits their land. Sozoranga sits at the higher end of Loja's coffee growing zone, and the farms benefit from cloud forest cover, consistent humidity and moderate temperatures, conditions that allow this kind of slow, controlled work.

The approach has worked out well for them in various competitions - the sisters took the top placings at the national Taza Dorada, the first time two women won together, and their coffee now sells to buyers across Asia, Europe and the Middle East from a canton that not long ago was steadily losing its growers. Chorora is as much a small research operation than a conventional farm, and we always find the profiles from this farm super fun. The same processing spec sheet from any other producer, we'd expect mega funk - but their coffees are clean and expressive.