Merci Fernandez / Peru

Once again this year, we have purchased coffee from Peruvian producer Merci Fernandez, whom we will refer to here as Merci. We are releasing her Bourbon variety and, following last year, her Geisha as well.

Now in her mid-twenties, she took over La Pomarrosa from her parents in 2020. Drawing on the agriculture and animal husbandry she studied at university, she is finding her own approach to farming, sometimes clashing with her parents over differences in direction. Although she has not been running the farm for very long, ever since our first visit to Peru in 2024, we have found greater sweetness and a more floral character in her coffees than in those of other producers.

She runs the farm with her parents and family in Colasay, an area within Cajamarca, a coffee-producing region in northern Peru. La Higuera is the name of a smaller community where several small-scale producers grow coffee. Merci continues to cultivate coffee alongside her parents, while also working in quality control (QC) for the coffee exporter Origin Coffee Lab (OCL). OCL is both a sourcing company that introduces us to producers in northern Peru and an exporter that ships their coffee overseas. We first met Merci at a cupping session at OCL.

Working both as a producer and as part of an exporting company, Merci has a clear understanding of the coffees valued by the market, including roasters like us. Her farming practices and processing methods are shaped with buyers and drinkers in mind, and she carefully and flexibly updates them to improve both yield and quality. Picking begins early in the morning on her farm. She says she offers higher pay to keep pickers motivated to harvest only fully ripe cherries. Great care goes into harvesting, as only perfectly ripe cherries produce complex flavors.

The harvested cherries are taken to the wet mill at the top of the hill, where they are first washed in clean water and sorted by density using flotation. This allows less-dense, unripe cherries and those made lighter by insect damage to float to the surface and be removed. After selecting only the dense cherries, a small pulper removes the outer skin and pulp, leaving the coffee in parchment. The parchment is placed in GrainPro bags with clean water, sealed, and fermented for 36 hours. According to Merci, allowing fermentation and the breakdown of mucilage to proceed slowly in cold water produces coffee with clean, bright acidity. The coffee is then dried on drying beds for around 15–20 days, depending on the weather, until it reaches the target moisture content.

Colasay, where Merci's farm is located, is one of the 12 districts (distritos) that make up Jaén Province. This mountainous municipality has a population of around 12,000 and an area of [735.73km²／603km²], with coffee farms spread across elevations of 1,800–2,200m. It is among the higher-altitude areas of Cajamarca.
Most of the coffee grown here is Bourbon, and much of it is certified organic. Small-scale producers in Colasay are said to maintain a traditional culture of exchanging labor known as "mingas." "Today for you, tomorrow for me"—during harvest, neighboring farmers help one another so that each family's cherries can be picked while fully ripe.