Peru is a vast and vexing coffee landscape. It is regionally and reputationally diverse, boasting the world’s highest-volume annual exports of certified organic coffee while only a quarter or so of its 200,000+ coffee farmers have any formal cooperative affiliation, and lacking a widespread structure to incentivize compensation for quality. And yet — as specialty heads have come to know — there are so many sky high elevation growing clusters sprinkled all the way up and down the landscape, from Cajamarca in the north to Cusco in the south, so for farmers committed to investing in their output and cooperatives/exporters/importers committed to equitable compensation outside of the status quo, the potential feels endless. In tandem with strong presence of indigenous-rooted communities and a more firmly entrenched commitment to environmental stewardship than survived the last century in many other parts of the hemisphere — working in Peru feels tremendously exciting, no matter the challenges.

El Morito is a prime example of the sorts of groups that have weathered the past several decades with resilience and ingenuity. Beginning in the 1970s as a loose, extended family network, this Cajamarca outfit informally exchanged ideas, best practices, and pooled resources for nearly 50 years before taking the cue of some competition-winning national recognition as a signal to formalize. David Flores rose to the occasion, building on his legal education to become El Morito’s General Manager when it inked its formal status as a producers’ association in 2022, with his cousin Lenin taking up the post of Quality Assurance. With razor-sharp focus to processing, storage, and sensory calibration from their Jaén HQ, El Morito continues pushing the envelope while also staying true to its roots both in the field and the family.

One example of this is the variety comprising this very lot — Caturro Amarillo. Is it basically just Yellow Caturra? Well, first of all, kill the “just,” because sipping any elite isolation of any OG variety is enough to put it back on its proverbial pedestal… but also — we’re not totally positive! Like many of the most attention-grabbing emergent varieties of the day, this sub-region has a local variation that’s earned its own moniker and presents its own VIBE, no matter what genetic testing might be able to eventually reveal. Regardless, Morito’s Yellow Cat cups all hint at this incredible tension between ripping tropical acidity and scrumptious syrupy sweetness—a combination we have no interest in resisting.

But rest assured that Lenin himself is not complacent when it comes to the variety game! On his own 2,000+ meter farm, he also grows Marshell, Bourbon, and Gesha — three varieties that are not uncommon to see among his neighbors — but he’s recently rounded out the garden with Pink Bourbon and Wush Wush seedlings gifted to him by farmer friends from abroad. Based on how superb Lenin’s work has proven to be thus far, we will definitely be elbowing our way to the front of the line for this stuff as soon as it’s available 😉 

For now — it’s mango shakes, it’s osh kosh ganache, it’s that vibrant Phrygian juxtaposition of maracas and synthesizers that slams even the dreariest of days with a life-giving burst of tropical luminosity.