Roaster’s Report - Peru Colca

Coffee description: Nestled in the Yanatile Valley in the Department of Cusco in the south of Peru, Valle Inca functions as a producer group, where Prudencio Vargas Saenz, who created and runs the group, buys parchment from farmers, reinvesting premiums in the community’s infrastructure to help them continue to improve quality. Prudencio, who lives in nearby Calca and brings the benefits of his former experience as an agricultural loan officer, used to operate outside the aegis of a collective, but after years of running Valle Inca informally, he formalized the organization in 2020 to gain organic certification, Fair Trade certification, and the ability to export on his own. Member-wise, Valle Inca is growing fast, with 101 plus farmers currently in the fold. It’s no surprise that more and more farmers want to work with Valle Inca; in the community, Prudencio is known for his honesty, trustworthiness, dedication, and drive to invest and reinvest in his community, genuinely engaging their goals and concerns. He also pays higher prices than farmers had access to prior to the founding of Valle Inca, which has helped to improve quality as well as overall community health over time.

Leaders like Prudencio are rare, and the quality of connection between leadership and producer shines through in the cup. At their best, coffees from Valle Inca display elegant honeyed florals, crisp red apple, and a pleasant tannic quality like oolong tea. These coffees cup beautifully, but where they really shine is in a brewed cup off the production roaster, and while they have a lot to offer specialty professionals in the way of nuance, they’re also wonderfully approachable for consumers.

One of the things that makes Valle Inca so exciting is that there’s still so much untapped potential there. There are many more hills and mountain peaks where producers we haven’t yet connected with are growing great coffee, and Prudencio is working hard to find them and bring them into the specialty market.

Source: Red Fox Coffee Merchants

Cooperative: Valle Inca

Country: Peru

Growing region: Cusco

Elevation: 1800 masl

Coffee varietal: Bourbon, Typica

Processing: Washed. Fermentation: 14-24 hours wet. Drying: 10-15 days on raised beds. Certified Organic

Green coffee transparency: 1518lbs @ $4.50/lb, November 2022 (Commodity coffee price: $1.65/lb. Why is this important? Coffee pricing is complex and multifaceted, and sharing what we paid is an incomplete picture, but we believe in sharing the data we have available, hoping that will embolden others to do the same, with the ultimate goal of getting producers fairer pay for their excellent work.)

Length of Relationship: Red Fox Coffee Merchants, since 2021. Culco, since 2022

Get more: Buy here

If you want to learn more about how we would brew this coffee, click here for our brew guides.