Fernandez Familia / Peru

This is our first release of a Peruvian coffee as an espresso roast. We often find a smooth, candy-like or syrupy sweetness in coffees from this region, which gave us the impression that they would also work well as espresso.
Espresso is brewed by forcing water at high pressure through finely ground coffee using an espresso machine. What we find interesting about this brewing method is how it presents the coffee's underlying character in a concentrated form. We have developed a roast with a concentrated sweet-tart character, bringing out a distinct finish reminiscent of red wine tannins and flavors of milk chocolate with macadamia nuts—qualities that can be harder to perceive in a lighter filter roast.
We hope you will enjoy it as espresso, whether at home or at a Fuglen café.

Since our first visit to Peru, we have been working with several coffee producers in the Colasay region. In fact, all of them belong to the Fernandez family. Many members of the family are involved in coffee production, from parents and children to their extended relatives. At FUGLEN, we buy coffee from Yonal Fernandez, his younger sister Merci, and their aunt Mareyla.

This Familia Fernandez is a blended lot combining coffees produced by the family. Regional or communal blends bring together coffees from producers in a small area to form a lot large enough to ship. In this case, perhaps "family blend" is the best description.

The family farms in Colasay also produce individual lots. Sometimes, however, a coffee may be of high quality but harvested in quantities too small to be shipped as a separate lot. To prevent these coffees from being mixed into lower-quality regional blends or commodity coffee, small quantities that meet high quality standards are sometimes brought together into a single blend. These coffees are known as "communal blends" or "communal producer blends," a system that increases producers' opportunities to receive premiums reflecting the quality of their coffee.

A "premium" is an incentive in which high-quality coffee receives a price above the market rate. By producing high-quality coffee and gaining access to these premiums, producers can receive higher prices and practice coffee farming with greater transparency and sustainability. This cycle helps improve producers' livelihoods and, for us, the quality of the coffees we offer.

Origin Coffee Lab, the exporter that introduces us to coffees to purchase and helps arrange their export to Japan, is one of the organizations putting this system into practice in Colasay. Through educational efforts, such as explaining how specialty coffee pricing works and providing feedback on coffee quality, they help ensure that premiums also reach small lots produced by families and local communities.

Fernandez Familia is a blend born from precisely this kind of system.