Ecuador Hacienda La Papaya

Great coffee needs great processing to be great. Hacienda La Papaya provides this service along with various other supports to La Josephina Estate Farm in Ecuador. Leopoldo Andrade established La Josephina in 2014 and has since been committed to growing nothing but high quality coffee. His partnership with La Papaya has taken this coffee to another level. 

From the importer:

Hacienda La Papaya is owned and operated by Juan Peña, one of Ecuador's most famous specialty coffee producers. He has been recognized for many top producer awards in Ecuador and throughout the World. His coffee has also been utilized in many Barista Competitions.

Juan grows many varieties of coffee at Hacienda La Papaya, most notably Typica, Sidra, Gesha, with others also in production. He is always actively engaged with processing experiments and tries to find the next best practice or method to make improvements to the coffee he produces. With the support of Segundo Cartuche, the team leader for wet processing and coffee drying, Hacienda La Papaya is able to introduce scientific, refined practices and measurements into their production.

Juan is an active member of his community, allowing neighbours to utilize his facilities, such as the nursery and the micro-mill, to help the overall sector of La Papaya grow and develop. Segundo Cartuche is an example of this, with his own plot of land and his own production, via the support of Hacienda La Papaya.

The coffees produced at Hacienda La Papaya are the result of a meticulous integral process, beginning with the genetics of the seeds in the nursery and knowing the mother plants. Every year the farm experiments with various controlled fermentation and drying, creating some really exquisite flavors in the cup.

It undergoes a traditional washed processing, with a 15 hour mucilage open-air fermentation in ceramic tanks, followed by 11 days of drying in controlled temperature and humidity rooms.

La Josefina Estate farm is located in El Chaco canton, Parroquia Santa Rosa, Napo Province. It was established in 2014 and is owned by Leopoldo Andrade who is an engineer in business administration. He bought the land for the purpose of this coffee project. He and his family are coffee pioneers as they were the first producers in the area. The farm is in an ecological reserve called “Coca Cayambe” at approx. 1500 MASL.

These lands are regularly covered by the volcanic ashes of Reventador mountain and the earth is nourished by the rich ash on a continual basis as Reventador is spewing ashes every day. Adjacent to the farm, there is a small town named Cascabel with a population of between 100-150 people. The next biggest town is located 30 min away, named El Chaco.

They have named the area where they farm coffee “Amazalia”. This name means Amazonia (Amazon jungle). It comes from an Amazonian hummingbird called “Amazilia”.

Amazalia is made up of two farms, La Josefina Estate & La Majorelle Estate. When they initially took over the lands, they noted that even though the land is part of the ecologic reserve, it was already worked by men growing grass for their cows. Each farm has approximately 30 hectares of land but only cultivates 13 hectares. The La Josefina Estate farm has been working with CafeExporto starting in 2021.

From the start when he bought the lands to start the farm, he has always visualized being a part of the specialty coffee world. Leopoldo has always chosen to focus on working with high-quality coffee with the goal of continuously improving quality and production. There is a group from the surrounding communities called “Integrated to Amazalia” that work together exchanging production, ideas, and information with the goal of improvement and quality.