Choco Vilcamundo (CVM) is the organizing group behind Finca El Dorado, la Noria, and Eliza. These farms have already racked up quite a number of awards considering they are just reaching a decade old this year. The family that manages CVM moved to Loja from Ibague, Colombia in 2016 with the purpose to grow very high quality Ecuadorian coffee in the high elevation Andes. Eliza, specifically, is a passion project embarked on by both that managing family at CVM alongside Martin Kutsch. Bernie Uhe is the managing director of CVM and largely oversees the day-to-day operations at the three farms. They have local Indigenous staff they've built their whole business around who have worked with them since inception when they started plotting how they'd organize their farms. In fact, much of their farm practice and coffee cultivating is rooted in shared knowledge between them and their staff, and not a one-sided effort. Martin wants to create and preserve a legacy that he could pass on to his daughters.

Eliza is a showcase of thoughtful and intentional practice from the get-go. The farm blends (what we think is) the best of all coffee farming practice. It's sold is rich in nutrient, and sits at a moderate high altitude of 1730 MASL while being in an optimal microclimate for coffee in the Andes mountains. The farm gets clean mountain water run off and its plots are filled with local, nurturing shade trees. They use their own neem and worm tea as fertilizer too. It's really a model for high-quality coffee farming that captures "terroir coffee" well. As a result, most of their spot list are all washed lots with these slightly manipulated anaerobic or in-cherry stages to slightly alter coffee flavor for different markets. It's an ingenious setup.

Typica Mejorado does not have a well kept lineage. It's believed to be a hybrid or mutation of the breeding projects by Nestle in Pichincha to create more pest and climate resilient crop. Specifically F1 was the main byproduct of those experiments. It was a hybrid of Ethiopian heirloom that is also very resilient and has okay cup quality. We've tasted a few F1s and they haven't really been our jam. Many times producers resort to planting some plots with these to be more risk adverse in order to prevent something devastating, like an entire loss of harvest. Typica Mejorado, on the other hand, was coined with Sidra by Don Olger Rogel, a field tech at the Nestle lab. He is credited for naming and identifying both varietals. Typica Mejorado is also grown outside of Ecuador, like in Costa Rica and Colombia. However, like Gesha, it is a sensitive plant that, if treated properly, can have incredible red tea, stone fruit, and floral qualities.

This coffee features a 2 to 3 day fermented cycle in cherry, then is depulped and left 3 days in honey. Finally, it gets washed, and dried. They call this a 3x3 process on their farm and consider it anaerobic. We agree, especially on taste. There is significant, but clean, in-cherry flavor.

This is our first time featuring Ecuador coffee and, prior to buying, Loja was a coffee region we were embarrassingly all too unfamiliar with. We'd had the classic Jijon lots, which are amazing. Aidan buys at least one of these coffees from other roasters every year. But, we new we wanted to find other producers here to work with. Ecuador coffee can be incredibly expensive for a variety of reasons -- some unrelated to coffee. Buying expensive green requires a decent bit of trust with the farm you're sourcing from and you really want to feel like the green can live up to that price, regardless of what seems to demand that markup. What we particularly admired about CVM as we learned more about them was their deep-rooted care in doing (literally) every facet of their project properly, and to the best of their ability. We felt the trust and the passion immediately for that reason. In addition, the green tasted as incredibly complex and most similar to many well nurtured coffee grown in famous coffee farms in Panama. We really hope you all see what we saw when first cupping these coffees with Darrin.

Green cost: $38/kg (+$5/kg shipping)
Package and roasting costs: $2.91/bag; $10/kg
Profile and sample use: ~1kg
Approx. Margin: ___%

Resting: Wait around 30 days for peak experience (degas the night before by opening bag for about an hour). We're impatient and think this has tasted high clarity as early as 25 days after roast too.

We've primarily enjoyed this offering as a pourover and soup, but this is such beautiful coffee that is hard to do wrong by. Be careful though; it can be easier to stall than some of our other coffees due to the difference in standard roast profile.

Temperature range: 198-201°F
Water: Tap/Demineralized and Third Wave Water Light Roast
Grind Settings: Finer Coarse (500-650µm)
Target Drawdown Time: 2:45-3:00 (12g dose, with longer bloom)

2 Pour Recipe has been the move!
1. 50g swirl bloom. Lightly swirl dripper. Wait 45-1 min.
2. Pour 150, but start light-medium agitation and flow rate while swirling. 100g in, transition to low flow rate, light agitation center pour until reaching 200g.

Coffee should have moderate bypass and drain within 3 minutes total.