Flavour & aroma notes of butterscotch, plum & sultana... plus sweet mandarin & wood oils as the coffee cools.
 
Country: Ecuador
Region: Tulipe & Nanegal
Process: Honey
Varietal: Typica Mejorado
Altitude: 1400-1600 metres above sea level
 
It was only around 20 years back that coffee started being farmed in considerable amounts within the Tulipe and Nanegal region of Ecuador. Since then, it has become the producer of one of the finest coffees in the country, with very sweet and fruity profiles.
This particular coffee was cultivated by four producers in the Tulipe and Nanegal region, and processed using the traditional Honey method.
The Honey process is very similar to the Natural process...
Natural Process: the whole coffee cherry is left to dry in the sun, leaving all the fruit and allowing it to shrivel & dry around the bean.
Honey Process: also known as Pulped Natural... this is where the coffee cherries are de-pulped, but allowed to dry without washing them. So although the skin & pulp are removed, the sticky golden mucilage remains. This is reminiscent of honey, hence the name.
The benefit to producers of Honey (& Natural) processing, is that it requires less water than Washed coffees. Leaving the fruit or mucilage to dry around the bean, means it can be removed during milling as opposed to using water.
 
80 kilometres North West of Quito, Ecuador’s capital city, are the neighbouring parishes of Tulipe and Nanegal. Here lie the ruins of the ‘Yumbos’, the ancestral people who inhabited this area from 800 BC. The ruins of Tulipe are an old ceremonial site where the architecture, geometry and beliefs of the Yumbos are reflected. They endured the conquests of the Incas and Spanish by playing the non-threatening role of merchants, offering agricultural goods and access to trading routes from the coast to the high Andes. Their disappearance is thought to be caused partly by disease brought by the colonisers, followed by a strong and violent eruption of the Pichincha volcano in 1660.
Today, Tulipe and Nanegal are touristic and agricultural areas, producing mainly sugar cane and cattle. These parishes turned into major agricultural areas after the agrarian reform of 1964, when smallholdings became more accessible to independent farmers and agriculture became less controlled by large land-owners.