Geisha El Bosque • Filter • Flower Bouquet, Wild Berries, Bright

Variety: Geisha
Post harvest processing: Natural
Producer: Finca Isabel
Microlot: El Bosque
Elevation: 1800 masl
Location: Loayza, Caranavi Province, Bolivia

Net weight: 125 or 250 grams whole beans
Roasted for: Filter

This. Is. It. Very few roasters in the world might get their hands onto this very limited and exclusive Geisha and we’re deeply grateful and honored to be able to share it with you. Sometimes the best things lie in the past, but in the case of this very special nanolot they might be showing us the future at the same time. As soon as you start interacting with Gabriela and Fernando from Finca Isabel, you get a feeling for their deep love and respect for the environment they grow their coffee in. They always say that nature was there before them, so taking care of the surrounding vegetation and flora has always been a top priority when starting to plan out their farm, and they haven’t backed down from this ideal until today. A concept that we love, share and promote. Hoping to inspire other producers to follow their path, inspire other roasters to highlight this aspect in their own relationships with producers, and inspire coffee lovers to care even more about the impact they can personally have just by choosing the coffees they’ll drink. With this nanolot, we are going back where arabica coffee was born, the ethiopian highland forests. Understanding how the coffee shrub strived in its natural habitat before being stripped out of it and spread onto high production plantations all over the world, getting more and more exhausted. With this Geisha, Finca Isabel is trying to emulate that primordial habitat in Bolivia.

The El Bosque nanolot is a research plot in lots of different ways and sprung from the genius of Fernando who studied agronomy in renowned universities in Central America as well as his field experience at Finca La Esmeralda in Panama. Here he is able to study the beneficial symbiosis between coffee and the local vegetation, starting to understand which trees have a particular positive effect on the coffee production. By understanding more of this, he hopes to gather evidence against deforestation. Also, the vegetation provides protection for the coffee trees against heavy rain, hailstorms, the burning sun and draughts. The El Bosque is on the upper side of the farm, where the vegetation has been left untouched to protect the water sources on the property and thus acting as water battery for the rest of the microlots lying below it, ensuring that enough humidity is available throughout the year, thus avoiding the coffee trees suffering during dry periods. Something that is more and more important as farmers struggle to build enough resilience to face climate change. The findings from this nanolot are key to provide the coffee growing community with strong leverage against extreme weather conditions arising more and more throughout producing regions. It is a beautiful example of how we need to work with nature instead of against it, in order to understand how it’s fragile yet proven interdependencies work in our favor. Even more so, when the results in the cup speak volumes!

Sourcing directly at origin from small farmers, we are fully aware of the hard work that goes into the quality product we buy and the challenges their families face to earn their fragile livelihood. In this regard, coffee producing communities in Bolivia face additional challenges, due to the lack of infrastructure, financial support and difficult access to international freight routes. To fairly balance the relationship between roaster and producer we are price takers and as part of our long term commitment to a financially and environmentally sustainable coffee production in Bolivia, we factor these realities into the pricing.

For this 20Kg batch of specialty grade coffee, Fernando and Gabriela received 48,46 USD/Kg.