Back to Roast Radar
Peru
ApricotCaramelFloralLemongrassPeachToffee
Peru - Las Etiopes Ethiopian "Heirloom" FW Lot #33
£14.00 – £62.00£31.00/250g
Process:Washed
Varietal:Catimor,Catuai,Caturra
Scenery
| Format | Price | /250g |
|---|---|---|
| 100g | £14.00 | £35.00 |
| 200g | £26.00 | £32.50 |
| 500g Best | £62.00 | £31.00 |
LONDON COFFEE FESTIVAL FEATURE RELEASE:
We're kicking off the 25/26 Peru crop year with some absolute belters, and coming strong out of the gates is this excellent high intervention Gesha from Simon Brown & Merlith Cruz.
Simon and Merlith's farm is in the Jaén province, planted in early 2020 with Ethiopian landrace and JARC lines alongside the more "classic" Latin American cultivars, with roughly half the property preserved as primary forest. Working as Falcon's country manager, Simon's years of quality improvement work with Peruvian smallholders led him to permanently relocate in 2019. His previous role as Head of Sourcing for Falcon gave him the global connections to obtain seedstock with germlines from Jimma, Sidama and Yirgacheffe, hence the name Las Etiopes ("The Ethiopians").
Best Brewed with: Filter
Lightest Roaster Influence: We've roasted this like an Ethiopian washed coffee - screamingly fast, slightly cooler/longer dev. If it looks like a duck & quacks like a duck...
Best Rested: 3-4+ weeks
Filter: 62g/L & 94°C, with rest we like to move down to 91°C
Espresso: Turbo shots + 3 weeks rest. 18g/48g+ & 18s+
We’re tasting: Super bright and sweet aromas - lemon curd, fresh white florals and butterscotch. In the cup the first impression is of peach iced tea, with a buttery body, layered florals and supporting notes of dried apricots, chamomile and lemongrass. As it cools that buttery caramel note becomes quite brioche-y, with the lemon curd it give the distinct impression of lemon iced buns.
Country of Origin: |
Peru |
Region: |
El Porvenir, Jaén, Cajamarca |
Producer: |
Simon Brown & Merlith Cruz |
Farm: |
Las Etiopes |
Variety: |
Ethiopian Landraces & Cultivars sourced from Jimma, Sidama, and Yirgacheffe, including 74110, 74112, 74140, and Kurume. |
Elevation: |
1950 - 2050 MASL |
Process: |
Traditional Washed: Selectively picked cherries are floated before depulping on the same day. Parchment has a longer cool ferment before thorough washing and density separation, before moving to raised beds to for 12 hours pre-dry, and finished on covered patios over 15 - 18 days, weather dependent, with frequent turning. |
Import Partner: |
Chacra |
Harvest |
Crop 25/26, Arrived UK: January 2026; First harvest purchasing Las Etiopes |
We first connected with Simon through mutual friends while looking to expand our Peruvian sourcing network, and samples from his export company Chacra landed late in the 24/25 season, after we had first sourced a Chacra lot from Kamba in the 23/24 season as part of a very early version of Facility. Every single one was outstanding, and we knew immediately that Chacra would be a key part of our Peruvian offer going forward.
Las Etiopes covers eight hectares in total, of which roughly half is preserved as primary forest. The planted area sits on terraced slopes built using pre-Hispanic agricultural practices to manage the steep terrain and prevent soil erosion. The topsoil is dark and rich in organic matter with a clay-heavy subsoil beneath, and the farm has its own water source via a stream that runs its full length and provides water to two surrounding villages. It is one of very few active coffee farms in the village of El Porvenir, and the surrounding primary forest means the planted area exists within a functioning ecosystem rather than a cleared agricultural landscape.
Of the cultivated area, around one hectare is dedicated to Ethiopian landrace and JARC accessions, and a further hectare to more established Latin American cultivars. In 2021, Simon and Merlith expanded by acquiring an additional three hectares of land between 1750 and 1900 masl, planted with Bourbon, Catuai, Caturra, Catimor and a small amount of Pacamara.
The Ethiopian germlines were brought from the Jimma region, with more recent plantings from Sidama and Yirgacheffe seedstock, and each line display distinct morphology. JARC, the Jimma Agricultural Research Centre, was established in 1967 and has released over 40 selected varieties bred for disease resistance and yield without sacrificing cup quality. These selections are distinct from regional landrace populations, which are genetically diverse, locally adapted cultivars that have developed over centuries in specific Ethiopian microclimates.
Obtaining this material and establishing it outside Ethiopia requires a sourcing network that very few producers have access to (especially as it's quite difficult to legally get viable germplasm out of Ethiopia), and planting it at 1950 to 2050 masl in northern Peru is a direct test of how these cultivars perform outside their evolutionary context.
Having requested samples of the "heirloom" lot (we generally try to avoid that word in the context of Ethiopia, as it downplays the amount of human selection involved in many of the accessions commercially grown) it is utterly uncanny how much this coffee looks, smells and tastes like a washed Ethiopian - our first impression on a blind table was "is this Chelbasa?". While single variety Ethiopian accessions are somewhat "common" in Latin America, mostly tracing back to institutes like CATIE in Costa Rica - it is supremely rare to see a mixture of cultivars and landraces like what you would find in their native land.
Peru's speciality coffee sector is overwhelmingly smallholder-driven, with around 150000 farming families producing the country's output across average plot sizes of two to three hectares. The vast majority of this coffee is washed at farm level and sold as parchment, often to intermediaries who transport it through multiple hands before it reaches an exporter. Cajamarca, and Jaén in particular, has established itself as the primary coffee-producing region for export, but the infrastructure gap between farm and port remains significant.
Simon's export company Chacra takes its name from the Quechua word "chakra", meaning a small plot of arable land used to produce food for nearby residents. Beyond Las Etiopes, Simon and Merlith have built both a wet mill and, as of this year, a dry mill, processing cherry purchased from neighbouring outgrower farms and offering producers in the area a direct route to export that bypasses the intermediary chain. The dry mill build slightly delayed their export operations this season but allowed the consolidation of some extremely high altitude late harvest lots that would otherwise have been missed. The vertical integration of farm, wet mill, dry mill, export and import means Simon is deploying his skillset across the entire value chain, from agronomy and picking through fermentation, drying, milling and logistics. It shows in the quality of the coffees we're bringing in, and it means farmers in the area receive a price based on quality rather than whatever the local market rate is on the day they need cash.
Las Etiopes placed 19th in Peru's 2022 Cup of Excellence, its first season producing enough volume to enter. The CoE entry that year washed - indeed, until 2025, almost all production at Las Etiopes was processed as washed. The cool climate at altitude and limited drying space made naturals difficult to produce at any meaningful scale.