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 two years, Juan has expanded his work, exporting more Hacienda La Papaya coffee to Europe together with us, and starting the CafExporto project, working with farms across Ecuador. We are more than excited to expand our collaboration with Juan, and to share his excellent work with a wider audience. We were able to visit Juan and his team in November 2021, both at the Hacienda and at CafExporto’s base in the nearby city of Cuenca, towards the very end of harvest.

Washed Typica

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. Juan puts much of his success down to the combination of high yield and incredible cup quality that these Mejorado plants provide. 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 from Juan’s Typica Mejorado trees, processed using a meticulous washed method. The ripe cherries are de-pulped using a Penagos eco-pulper, which also removes about 90% of the mucilage using a mechanical brushing method. This almost mucilage-free parchment is then soaked under water for 15 hours, resulting in very minimal fermentation. The parchment is then dried in Juan’s purpose built drying ‘houses’, designed in collaboration with the University of Cuenca. This results in a very clean interpretation of Juan’s Typica, with floral jasmine notes backed up by oolong tea and a deep honey sweetness.