ICON 65 - Yulisa Carhuallocllo, Best of Cajamarca #1

Yulisa Carhuallocllo Arévalo is a 23-year-old coffee farmer who began growing coffee at a very young age, helping her family and learning every stage of the process in the field. Over the years, she decided to take on a more active role, pursuing training and committing to continuous improvement. More recently she has been focused on producing speciality coffee, particularly the Gesha variety.

Yulisa uses exceptional farming practices, including organic fertilisers, manual weeding with a machete and hoe rather than pesticides, preventive pest control and selective pruning to promote healthy growth and productivity. Her coffees are dried in what is known as a parabolic dryer. This structure helps prevent the coffee from taking on extra moisture, and the humidity and temperature can be controlled by opening the sides of the building, which are usually made from plastic sheeting.

Yulisa’s dedication to coffee production paid off when this lot won first place in the ExpoCafé Cajamarca Speciality Coffee Competition with an outstanding cup score of 91.5, an achievement that not only set an auction record for her coffee, but also put Cajamarca on the map for national and international buyers. Her story reflects perseverance, discipline and vision, making her a benchmark for female leadership in Peruvian coffee farming and an inspiration for new generations of producers.

This stunner was processed using her typical washed coffee protocol. Cherries are harvested at peak ripeness, where pickers are trained in advance to ensure a rigorous harvest focused solely on ripe fruit. The coffee then undergoes sorting and floating to remove impurities and defective cherries. Next, the sorted cherries are placed in airtight bins for controlled anoxic fermentation for 72 hours. The coffee is then pulped and left to ferment for a further 24 hours, allowing more sugars to be consumed and developing greater complexity in the cup. Finally, the coffee is carefully washed to remove the remaining sticky mucilage, leaving the seeds clean and ready for drying.

After washing, the parchment coffee is transferred to the parabolic dryer, where it is spread in thin, even layers to ensure proper air circulation. During drying, the seeds are constantly raked to promote uniform dehydration and prevent unwanted fermentation. This process is carried out slowly until a final moisture content of approximately 10–11% is reached. Finally, the dried coffee is stored under suitable conditions to allow the moisture to homogenise.

Gesha is a coffee variety originally collected from Ethiopian forests in the 1930s. It was sent to the Lyamungu research station in Tanzania, then brought to Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Central America in 1953, where it was logged as accession T2722. Recognized for its tolerance to coffee leaf rust, CATIE distributed it widely throughout Panama in the 1960s. However, farmers didn't favor it due to its brittle branches and relatively low yield, so it wasn't widely planted.

There are actually multiple genetically distinct plant types referred to as Gesha, many sharing similar Ethiopian origins. World Coffee Research has confirmed that the Panamanian Gesha descendant of T2722 is a distinct and uniform variety. When managed well at high altitude, its cup profile can be phenomenal, known for delicate floral and peach aromas.

The lack of a standard translation from Ethiopian dialects to English has resulted in two interchangeably used spellings. The coffee was originally collected near a mountain commonly rendered in English as "Gesha." However, it was first recorded in germplasm records as "Geisha," a spelling mostly maintained by coffee researchers and germplasm banks for decades. The use of "Geisha" is problematic, though, as its non-coffee context carries specific connotations that many feel have been misappropriated for marketing value.

Gesha's global reputation was cemented by the Peterson family of Boquete. Their Hacienda Esmeralda won the Best of Panama competition in 2004 with this variety. The following year, their Gesha received exceptionally high marks and broke the then-record for green coffee auction prices, selling for over $20/pound.

The washed process was designed to minimize the risk of off-flavours caused by uncontrolled fermentation during the natural process. Cherries are typically sorted using a flotation tank, where under-ripe or defective fruits float to the top and can be removed. The remaining cherries are then pulped and left in a tank to ferment until the sticky fruit mucilage is soft enough to be washed off the parchment—a paper-like layer surrounding the seed.

The design and cleanliness of the tanks used for fermentation are crucial, and the type, degree and speed of microbial activity depends on various factors. These include the amount of fruit remaining, the presence of bacteria and yeasts, whether the tank is filled with water, and the environmental conditions.

Once the mucilage has sufficiently degraded, it's washed away with water. The remaining parchment coffee, as it's commonly called, is then dried until it reaches a safe moisture content. The bacteria-rich and sugary water used in the process must be treated carefully, as it can cause algae blooms if it enters streams and rivers.

In situations where large amounts of coffee are processed in bulk, such as in Ethiopia, some operations have found it economical to use a mechanical demucilager. This device removes all the fruit from the parchment with minimal water, bypassing the fermentation stage entirely. However, some believe this leads to a reduction in cup quality, as many flavour precursors are created through fermentation.