Traveling to Peru with Falcon

When San Francisco had announced a lockdown in March 2020, we had just gotten back from a coffee in trip in Bella Vista, Mexico. What we all hoped would last no longer than a month continued for a few years, and we stopped all travel to keep safe. While it’s possible to buy green coffee without ever having to set foot on a coffee farm, visiting our partners and traveling to coffee origins is a way for us make connections, continue to build relationships, and learn more about seed-to-cup from first hand experience. We were able to keep in touch over email and video calls, but we really missed making our visits. So, when Corey and I were finally able to hop on a plane to Peru in the late summer of 2022, we were beyond excited!

hiking through a coffee farm on a hill

Falcon Coffee Importers organized the trip to Jaen, Cajamarca. Located in the northern part of Peru, it’s one of the main coffee producing regions of the country, and is also where Falcon has an office. There are a variety of ways to travel to coffee growing regions, but one of the benefits of traveling with a partner importer is that you get a well curated and organized trip to see operations from farm to warehouse. We traveled with Brian, our Falcon US rep, and Figure 8 Coffee Purveyors. We were joined by Bara (Falcon Europe), and Giorgios (Falcon UK).

Falcon arranged meetings with farmers who have competed at the Cup of Excellence and had well organized farmers. They had trees in rows, organized into different sections, and had systems that kept track of quality and when a coffee was harvested. 

Most farms we visited had just finished harvest, but there were a few that still need more time. Here, the red cherries are almost ready to pick, while the green needs several more weeks to ripen.

Similar to other coffee trips, our days were long, visiting three coffee producers a day, routinely leaving our hotel around 8:00am and returning around 8:00pm or later. Farms and processing facilities are almost always located in remote areas, and getting to and from every person and place we visited required at least a two hour drive on a mix of evenly paved roads and rocky, dirt roads. Almost every farmer we met thanked us for coming, and inaugurated the visit with offering us a drink of local or homemade liquor made with sugarcane. And while we never expected to be hosted for a meal, every farmer we met close to lunch time had planned an elaborate meal for us to enjoy together. Even though Falcon made alternative lunch arrangements, we did our best to make room in our stomachs. In some ways, the extra meal did us a favor and kept our energy up, since all our visits required quite a bit of hiking!

One of many views we were rewarded with after long hikes

We drove on many dirt roads to access farms

Marcelino Chinguel and his family produce award winning coffees, and we had the opportunity to visit the family farm and their processing area, where family and workers often stay during harvest season. This photo was taken behind the kitchen. Getting to the farm was about a 45 minute drive from the processing area. We took the road that’s in the upper middle left of this photo.

Natural coffees (top) and washed coffees (bottom) separated and drying in a covered room. There are openings throughout the drying structure to help with airflow and controlling temperature. Drying coffees slowly helps maintain coffee quality over time.

Although farm visits always rewards us with beautiful views, perhaps one of my favorite parts of the trip was visiting the Falcon Office and warehouse. Operations run all day during harvest season, in which farmers will come by with bags of coffee in parchment to sell to Falcon. From there, Falcon holds onto the bags submitted, takes samples, and brings them to the lab where cuppers will sample roast and cup to share their evaluations and scores. Sample evaluation during the peak of harvest season is no small task; cuppers taste as many submitted coffee lots as possible, going through dozens of samples and doing their best to give farmers results by the end of the day. If a coffee is rejected, Falcon will tell them why, and the farmer will have the opportunity to fix it, if possible, and resubmit for evaluation and purchase. Some farmer will try to fix it, or will decide to sell their coffees elsewhere.

This farmer brought coffees in parchment to the Falcon warehouse, but the coffee was rejected because it wasn’t at the right moisture level and needed another day of drying. Rather than take his coffee and try to sell to another buy, this farmer decided to further dry the coffees at the warehouse and asked Falcon to resample.

Coffees that Falcon purchases are well organized, registering each bag in their system with information including producer name, number of bags total by the producer, coffee type, and cup score, and other codes that help identify this coffee to prevent mistakes.

Cupping alongside the Falcon team was also a fun opportunity to align and share our tasting experiences. What I found most interesting was observing Brian, Bara, and Giorgios deliberating over their cupping notes and SCA scores, and deciding who is going to take which coffees back to their regions based on their clients’ flavor preferences. After spending all this time with Falcon and getting to see how much effort goes into curating a sound offer list, Corey and I came back home feeling even more excited about our partnership.

Giorgios (middle) and Bara (second to the right) deliberating and discussing the quality of a coffee and trying to decide which is the best region to sell this coffee

This coffee that we sourced from Falcon comes from Casiano Lopez in the Cusco region, where Falcon is also starting to expand their roots. Casiano started his farm 13 years ago surrounded by old growth forests in the Cedrobamba community in La Convención Province. He’s been a member of the Valle Incahuasi Cooperative for 11 years, and this cooperative works with smallholder farmers, helping them improve the quality of their coffees by providing technical support. This coffee is similar to some Cajamarca coffees we’ve carried in the past, with sweet fruit notes and round undertones. We taste mango, dulce de leche, and hazelnut, and it’s quickly become one of our staff favorites!