Hacienda La Papaya Oak Barrel

Hacienda La Papaya is located just outside the town of Saraguro, in the Loja region of Southern Ecuador. Juan Peña, an agricultural engineer, began to experiment with coffee here in 2010, and moved to work in coffee full time in 2014 after his rose crop was wiped out by a violent storm in Cuenca. Over the intervening years he has thrown himself into the pursuit of high quality coffee, with a meticulous and scientific approach. This approach, shaped by Juan’s experience in roses and his training as an agricultural engineer, has led to an astronomic rise to high quality and international recognition, over just 8 years. 

This lot is from Juan’s Typica Mejorado trees, fermented in oak barrels for 5 days. These oak barrels were previously used to age Ecuadorean rum for over 20 years, so have a rich microbiota. This means that the coffee fermentation is pushed in a rather different direction than if it was dominated by the coffee’s native microbiota, creating a completely new expression of Juan’s Typica. This allows Juan to create incredible complexity while maintaining a clean expression, deeper, richer and more complex than plastic tank fermentations.