Comet Ecuador Chorrora Whole Bean

8oz / 226g Whole Bean
Notes: Lemon Bars, White Florals, Asian Pears, Sparkling Mouthfeel
Region: Sozoranga, Loja
Producer: Olinka Velez, Finca Chorrora
Varietal: Pink Bourbon
Process: Washed
Elevation: 1300 - 1500 m
 
From Comet:
 
"Story
In 2025 we took our first trip to visit coffee farms and one of those farms was Finca Chorrora; owned and operated by Olinka Velez. Chorrora sits just below where Olinka's sister Diana runs her own farm, Yambamine. Located at 1300-1500 masl Olinka has transformed a once abandoned coffee farm into a thriving coffee farm, which harvests 8-9 of the 20 hectares there. The land sits on a part of the Inca trail, which runs from Cusco to Quito. It is a part of the mountains that is in a cloud forest and overlooks Peru in front of it. Each year they continually replant new coffee trees as they replace the old ones that don't yield many good cherries.
 
Over the years Olinka has put time and effort into empowering women in coffee who work on her farm and making sure that all the pickers that work for her receive much more than the Ecuadorian minimum wage. She has the same employees year after year who continuously do a good job and this has made it clear that Olinka cares about the people she works with and who work for her. A lot of the women who pick coffee for Olinka will paint their nails the color of ripe cherries to help clearly identify the best cherries!
 
In 2019 Joen Jooyeon used Olinka's Carbonic Maceration Sidra to win the South Korean Barista Championship, which propelled her to the world's stage where she won the World Barista Championship. This helped Olinka garner a name for herself and get recognized by roasters all over the world.
 
Olinka grows 14 different varieties and with a microbiologist she and her sister have worked hard on implementing their own fermentations with local yeast strains from the coffee cherries themselves. Olinka and Diana have worked hard together to produce the some of the highest quality coffee in Ecuador and even have a cafe in Loja, where they are able to showcase their hard work. Diana herself has recently built new drying beds at the top of her farm and only grows Sidra. In her words to us, she is "the queen of sidra". To Diana, her farm Yambamine has a spiritual place in her heart and for those that visit. Both Chorrora and Yambamine are special farms and the sisters who work it have put their heart into it.
 
Process
Coffees are picked at peak ripeness, floated, and pulped before being placed in water to ferment as a washed process. Afterwards, the cherries are placed on raised beds inside Olinka's greenhouse to dry.
 
Variety
Pink Bourbon was originally thought to be a natural mutation of a yellow or red bourbon variety. Originally discovered in Huila, Colombia in the 1980s, producers began cultivating this unknown variety because it was resistant to coffee leaf rust, which was a problem in the 80s. But, in 2023 genetics recently revealed it to be a wild Ethiopian Landrace. The exact origins or history of this variety are not confirmed nor specifically known at this time."