Feature Espresso: Elvis Tineo Rafael | Perú

Key origin info:

Producer: Elvis Tineo Rafael
Processing: by Elvis at his family farm in El Diamante

Region: Jaen, Cajamarca
Altitude: 1650 - 1700 masl

Varietals: Centroamericano
Process: Washed

Exporter: Falcon Coffees | Importer: Falcon Speciality

Cup profile: Creamy body, honey toffee & grapes

More about Elvis & his coffee:

Elvis Reinerio Tineo Rafael is a second-generation coffee producer from the El Diamante area overlooking the city of Jaen in Cajamarca, Northen Peru.  Elvis and his family own around 12 hectares of land between them.

Elvis himself owns and manages around 3 hectares, sitting between 1700 to 1900 masl. The land is planted mainly with with Bourbon, Caturra and Catuai varieties but more recently some new, rare varieties like Gesha and Centroamericano have also been added. The whole family work the land together, coordinating their picking, processing and drying and sharing their facilities. 

El Diamante is a coffee producing area closest to the city of Jaen, main city in the Cajamarca coffee region. We had the privilege of visiting Elvis and his family at their beautiful farm and found out more about their coffee journey. As Elvis explained, coffee farming has been in the family for a long time, they used to produce mostly commercial quality coffees which they sold at the local market. Recently, this was just about covering their production costs and didn't allow for any investments on the farm so they decided to change things around. Over the last few years Elvis has been learning and implementing improved harvesting and processing practices with some great results.

This is the third year of him and his family working with Falcon Speciality (our exporting and importing partner for Peru) and earning premiums appropriate for the quality of his coffee which allows him to make plans for the future, invest in further developments on the farm. As Elvis says: “There is still much more to improve,” and he has lots of plans for the future from constructing better drying facilities to establishing a demo plot for neighbours to learn from on a recently purchased parcel of land. We love his energy and determination and are proud to support him and bring you more of his delicious coffee.

About the Centroamericano variety:

Centroamericano is a cross between the Ethiopian landrace variety Rume Sudan and a leaf rust-resistant variety called T5296. It is one of the so called F1 - first generation hybrid varieties developed in order to increase genetic diversity within the cultivated coffee plants around the world, and improve vigour and resistance.

Typically, F1 hybrid parents are chosen to be genetically distant from one another; this distance maximizes hybrid vigour, which translates into high yields and overall vigour, without losses in cup quality or disease resistance. There are only a handful of F1 hybrid coffee varieties in the world, most developed in the last 10 years, and only recently commercially available to farmers. Centroamericano is resistant to coffee leaf rust, is extremely high yielding. It has also proven to have exceptional cup quality potential when well-managed at high altitudes.

This particular lot from Elvis’ farm has a very creamy coating body and great honeyed toffee like sweet aromatics alongside a soft fruit note of red grape.