Peru - Edy Robles Sosa [25/26]

We're massive fans of Peru - super interesting coffees from an origin that was oft slept on; but now is starting to get the recognition it deserves. Incredible altitudes and a real push for producer skills - especially in more advanced post-harvest processing - has seen some incredible coffees come out of this origin.

Kicking us off for the Peruvian 25/26 crop year - we've got a very small lot from producer Edy Robles Sosa, returning for his second season. Edy (10th place national winner, 2020 Peru COE) specialises in honey process coffees and this shows in the cup - an excellent elevation of the bourbon cup profile.

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter

Lightest Roaster Influence: We've found this coffee responds better to a slightly slowed down approach compared to our usual yeet-y style of roasting - easing off the gas a little to extend to the total roast time, but keeping the end temp low as this coffee has the classic Peruvian nature of picking up colour early in the roast.

Best Rested: 3-4 weeks

Filter: 62g/L & 96°C, with rest we like to move down to 93°C

Espresso: Turbo shots + 3 weeks rest. 18g/48g+ & 20s or 18g, 42-45, 28-32s for a trad shot.

We’re tasting: Bright aromatics of lemon verbena tea, pain au raisin and soft florals. In the cup it's light, bright and sweet - we find gooseberry, persimmon and yellow plum, alongside a honeycomb & redcurrant. As it cools it becomes softly tropical with a confectionary sweetness, like pandan cake. Elegant & silky.

Traceability

Country of Origin:	Peru
Region:	San Antonio, Yanatile, Calca, Cusco
Producer:	Edy Robles Sosa & his wife
Farm:	Yanamonte
Variety:	Bourbon
Elevation:	1800 MASL
Process:	Double Ferment Anoxic Honey: Selectively harvested cherries are washed, sorted, and floaters removed. Cherries undergo a 36-hour anoxic fermentation in inside sealed timbos (barrels with air-locks) under shade, then pulped and returned to the timbos for a  second 40 hour ferment. Fermentation progress is judged by parchment color and mucilage separation. Dried as a honey on raised beds for 22 days.
Import Partner:	Que Onda
Harvest	Harvest: September - October 2025, Crop 25/26 - Arrived UK: Feb 26

 

The Story

Edy Robles Sosa is a second-generation Quechua coffee producer, following in the footsteps of his father Marcelino on the steep slopes of San Antonio in Cusco's Yanatile district. His farm Yanamonte, "Black Mountain" in Quechua, is about as remote as Peruvian coffee gets; eight hours on dirt roads from the nearest city, then a walk uphill with no phone signal or internet at the top. He farms around 5 hectares alongside his wife Yolanda Cabrera Alvarez, growing Bourbon, Typica and Caturra under native pacay and pisonay shade trees, with entirely organic inputs including island guano, phosphate rock and compost made from coffee pulp. 

During harvest, the community practises Ayni, an ancient Quechua system of reciprocal labour that predates the Inca empire and persists across rural highland Peru. Rather than hiring migrant pickers, families in San Antonio work each other's harvests in turn, with the understanding that the labour given will be returned in kind. Ayni functions as an obligation-based social contract embedded in Quechua culture, carrying real social weight; failing to reciprocate damages standing within the community. It serves simultaneously as an economic mechanism and a form of social cohesion, and for producers like Edy, operating at small scale in areas where hired labour is difficult to source and expensive to transport in, it is also what keeps harvest practically viable.

Cusco as a coffee region tends to sit in the shadow of more established Peruvian origins like Cajamarca or San Martín, partly because of access. The infrastructure challenges are real, and they shape everything about how coffee is produced and moved in Yanatile. Edy operates entirely outside the cooperative system, which is notable given that cooperatives remain the primary route to market for most Peruvian smallholders. Instead, he has built direct relationships with importers (for example, Que Onda coffee from whom we purchased this lot) giving him both a commercial pathway for small, carefully processed lots and the kind of feedback loop that supports ongoing refinement at the processing level. His 2020 Cup of Excellence result brought some visibility to this, but it is the consistency of his production across seasons that has kept those relationships in place.