Hacienda La Papaya Anaerobic Bourbon

CafExporto

We’re excited to continue our collaboration with Juan Peña, owner of Hacienda La Papaya and CafExporto. Since meeting in Aarhus in 2015, we have purchased many small experimental lots, continuing a conversation through high quality coffee. Over the past few years, Juan has expanded his work, exporting more Hacienda La Papaya coffee to Europe together with us, and starting the CafExporto project, taking over management of two new farms in other parts of Ecuador. We are more than excited to expand our collaboration with Juan, and to share his excellent work with a wider audience. We visited Juan and his team again at the end of 2025, both at the Hacienda and at CafExporto’s base in the nearby city of Cuenca, towards the end of harvest.

Anaerobic Bourbon

This hard work and innovation is also clear when tasting Juan’s coffees; top-quality micro-lots, with wildly varying flavour profiles and expressions. Juan mainly grows Typica ‘Mejorado’, the enhanced version of the varietal, first grown on Nestle’s experimental farms in the north of Ecuador. The Hacienda is also home to plots of Mejorado’s Nestle sibling Sidra, and a very limited amount of Geisha, while a small plot of Pacamara near the top of the farm is awaiting its first big harvest. This lot is only the third exportable harvest from Juan’s Bourbon trees, a very small plot planted six years ago. La Cabra is the only roastery to have purchased from this plot each harvest.

These cherries, with their great potential for sweetness and ripe fruit notes, are fermented in plastic tanks without oxygen for 5 days, or 120 hours. These plastic tanks are kept very clean, but fermentation juices are added from previous anaerobic batches, in a similar concept to a sourdough starter, in order to kickstart the fermentation with an existing culture of bacteria and yeast, pushing in the desired direction and leading to greater consistency.

This fermentation further enhances the mouthfeel and acidity of the Bourbon, while maintaining an incredibly clean and juicy expression of tropical fruit.