This is In My Mug coffee number 926, roasted and posted to subscribers on Friday 7th August 2026.

Think delicate, sweet white peach and a little pop of white grape. A twist of lime to it and a sprinkle of white sugar sweetness makes this a sweet but elegant coffee. That's what's landed on your doorstep this week, and it's got a good story behind it too.

This is the second lot we've had in from Pedro Flores this season. Back in the spring we roasted his Dry Fermented Washed coffee. This time round, same farm, same crop of Caturra and Catuai cherries, completely different process. It's called Mosto Washed, and it's one of our favourite things happening in coffee processing right now.

Same farm, different path

Pedro's cherries come from a small patch of land in Villa Rosario, a colonia just outside Caranavi in Bolivia's Yungas region. Two hectares, spread across a ridge, high enough up that Pedro's noticed the plants on one side of the slope behave differently to the plants on the other. That's the kind of detail you only pick up after years of paying close attention.

He's part of Sol De La Mañana, a mentoring programme run by our exporting partners at Agricafe. The name means "the sun of tomorrow," and that's more or less the point of it: helping small producers like Pedro get the training, in agronomy, in cupping, in understanding the market, to build something that lasts. His cherries travel to Agricafe's Buena Vista mill each evening, where every lot gets separated, measured and tracked with a level of care that would be considered overkill almost anywhere else.

For a while, lots this small from Sol De La Mañana producers tended to get blended together, which meant coffees like Pedro's rarely made it into a bag with his name on it. That's changing. Roland, our green buyer, has been particularly happy about seeing more single origin lots like this one come through this harvest. As he put it, it's a step forward not just for transparency, but for recognising the skill of the individual farmers whose work would otherwise go unnamed.

So what's mosto, then?

Here's the short version, though if you want the full story we've written an entire article on mosto processing for exactly this kind of curiosity.

Mosto is a Spanish word for fresh fruit juice, the kind you get before it's fully fermented. Wine drinkers will know the same idea from the English word "must." In coffee, mosto is the liquid that comes off ripe cherries as they ferment, and it turns out that liquid is full of useful things: yeasts, bacteria, acids, sugars, all the microbial activity that shapes flavour.

Rather than letting that liquid go to waste, mosto processing saves it and uses it to kick-start the next batch of coffee. Think sourdough starter, or a kombucha SCOBY. A living culture gets carried from one ferment into the next, giving it a head start and steering the flavour in a more deliberate direction.

For Pedro's coffee, that meant a first batch was depulped and left to ferment, with the mosto collected and its pH and microbial activity closely watched. A second batch of depulped cherries then went into a fresh tank with that mosto added, giving the fermentation a running start. Once it had done its job breaking down the mucilage, the coffee was rinsed and moved to the drying beds as normal.

The result is a coffee that keeps the clean, defined structure you'd expect from a washed process, but with an extra layer of juiciness and complexity riding on top. It's a big part of why this one lands so differently to Pedro's first lot, even though the cherries themselves are identical.

What's in the cup

On the cupping table, this one scored 87 points, with sweetness, acidity and balance all doing a lot of the work. If cupping scores are new territory for you, we've broken down what they actually mean, and if you fancy having a go at cupping yourself, our guide to coffee cupping will get you started.

We've taken it to a medium dark roast this time. It's been allowed to develop for a little while after first crack before we pushed it through toward the edge of second, which is what's rounding out that white sugar sweetness against the brighter grape and lime notes.

Drink it this week

Pedro's coffee doesn't turn up in your mug often, so make the most of it while it's here. However you're brewing, let it cool for a minute before that first sip. That's when the white grape and lime really come forward.

Thanks for having a coffee with us this week.