Peru: Irene Herrera - La Mandarina, Marshell, Washed

This elegant cup opens with a burst of tangerine followed by strawberry fondants and a spoonful of brown sugar. As it finishes, there's a little lime juice and a delicate floral note too.

While looking through samples from Cajamarca in Peru, this Washed Marshell coffee really stood out on the cupping table for its elegance and clarity. We were cupping with the Origin Coffee Lab team (our local exporters) and looking for something really tasty to fill a gap in our Peruvian coffee offering this year. When they shared the name of the producer with Roland - Irene Herrera - it was a light bulb moment.

A Happy Coincidence

The La Coipa district is nestled in the north east corner of the Cajamarca region of Peru. La Coipa is a fantastic coffee-producing area - the locale of Nima Juarez (El Roble and La Quebrada) whose coffee we have enjoyed in previous years, and Kelvin Guerrero (La Esmerelda) whose coffee we released earlier this year. 

In 2022 Roland went to Peru for the first time, after we had purchased some coffees from there the year previous. It was his first trip with Origin Coffee Lab - who we’re now lucky enough to know well - and they headed to the La Coipa village. Through the course of the morning they walked past several coffee farms, finishing up at their destination for lunch at the house of head of Gallitos de Rocas comite, Milciades Minga… and his wife Irene Herrera!

Hospitality and Horticulture

The couple's house is a little larger than some other nearby houses, maybe because Milciades is also a carpenter. The top floor is used for drying coffee, with living space and kitchen below. Guinea Pigs are kept inside in a pen - a staple food animal in Peru, known as Cuy (pronounced Coo-ee). Alongside a big lunch by Irene, they enjoyed an excellent fruit punch made in a barrel by mixing fruit juice and the local cane sugar spirit Yonke.

The farm La Mandarina is just behind the house and includes a small nursery of baby plants. As with many Cajamarca farms, it's a steep climb to the top and Roland was hard pressed to keep up with Irene! The small estate spans from 1,750 to 2,000 metres above sea level. Irene cultivates Caturra, Marshell, and Bourbon varieties - the lot we have here has been separated from the Marshell trees only. The flowering period occurs from October to December, and the harvest takes place between May and September, with peak months from June to August 2024. 

Once selectively picked, as is typical in Peru, the coffee has been Washed processed. The cherries are depulped, fermentated in a tank for 24-36 hours, washed, and dried in solar dryers for 10-15 days.

Mysterious Marshell 

Marshell's origins are still being debated. The most widely held view is that it's a natural mutation of Bourbon, first spotted in 1997 by a farmer called Grimanés Morales Lizana on her farm in San Ignacio, Cajamarca. She propagated from it after a disease outbreak wiped out everything around it, and named it drawing on the names of her family members, including her father-in-law Marcelino. An alternative theory, backed by some genetic testing, suggests Marshell may be related to Costa Rica 95, a Catimor-group cultivar developed by ICAFE from Caturra and Timor Hybrid 832/1. No definitive published research has settled the question either way.
What both theories agree on is the disease resistance. Many Peruvian farmers were encouraged to plant Catimor varietals through the mid-2010s by cooperatives, exporters, and government programmes to help combat leaf rust and other diseases. Catimors divide opinion in the coffee community: partial Robusta genetics can lead to flat, vegetal cup profiles when not handled with care. This lot is a reminder that they don't have to.

For more on the coffee varietals behind Marshell, read our varietal guides on Catimor, Bourbon, and Marshell itself.

The World Leader in Organic Coffee 

Despite being the 9th largest producing country globally, exporting approximately 3,772,000 bags of coffee annually, Peru is presently the world’s largest exporter for Organic coffee. Roughly 90,000 hectares of coffee-growing farmland in Peru is certified Organic, as is La Mandarina. The main driver of this trend is that the vast majority of production in the country is carried out by smallholder producers who lack the resources to invest in chemical products for use on their farms. This does however present a huge risk from the ever-increasing threat of coffee leaf rust, exacerbated by climate change, which has had a major impact in Peru where pesticide and fungicide use is rare.