Merci Fernandez / Peru

This year, we are once again proud to release coffees from Peruvian producer Merci Fernandez. Alongside her Bourbon lot, we are also offering a Yellow Geisha, following last year's release.

Now in her mid-twenties, Merci took over La Pomarrosa Farm from her parents in 2020. Drawing on her studies in agriculture and livestock management, she is building her own vision for farming—sometimes challenging traditional approaches and finding her own path forward. Although she has only managed the farm for a few years, ever since our first visit to Peru in 2024, we have consistently found her coffees to possess a remarkable sweetness and floral character that stand out among those of neighboring producers.

Merci farms together with her family in Colasay, a coffee-producing region in the Cajamarca department of northern Peru. La Higuera, where the farm is located, is a small community home to many smallholder coffee producers. In addition to managing her family's farm, Merci also works as a quality control specialist for Origin Coffee Lab (OCL), a coffee exporter and sourcing company that connects producers in northern Peru with roasters around the world. In fact, we first met Merci during a cupping session at OCL.

Working both as a producer and as part of an exporting company, Merci has a deep understanding of the qualities that roasters and coffee buyers seek. The farming practices and processing methods implemented on her farm are continuously refined with both producers and consumers in mind, balancing quality improvements with sustainable production.

Harvesting begins early in the morning. To ensure that only perfectly ripe cherries are picked, Merci offers higher compensation to pickers, encouraging careful and selective harvesting. She believes that fully ripe cherries are essential for producing coffees with complexity and clarity of flavor.

Once harvested, the cherries are transported to the wet mill located at the top of the hill. There, they are washed with clean water and sorted by density using flotation. This removes underdeveloped beans and insect-damaged cherries that float to the surface. The selected cherries are then depulped using a small pulper.

The parchment coffee is placed into GrainPro bags together with clean water and sealed for 36 hours of fermentation. By allowing a slow fermentation and mucilage breakdown in cool water, Merci aims to produce coffees with bright acidity and exceptional cleanliness. Depending on weather conditions, the coffee is then dried on raised beds for approximately 15–20 days until the desired moisture content is reached.

Colasay, where Merci's farm is located, is one of the twelve districts that make up Jaén Province. Situated in a mountainous region of northern Peru, coffee farms are typically found between 1,800 and 2,200 meters above sea level, making it one of the higher-elevation coffee-growing areas within Cajamarca.

Most of the coffee cultivated in Colasay is Bourbon, and a large percentage of farms are organically certified. Smallholder producers in the region continue to practice a traditional form of communal labor exchange known as “mingas.” During harvest season, neighboring farmers help each other pick coffee, ensuring that cherries are harvested at peak ripeness.

“Today for you, tomorrow for me” is the spirit behind this long-standing tradition, reflecting the strong sense of community that remains an important part of coffee production in Colasay.