Onyx - Peru Isaias Ruiz Vasquez

Alto Mayo, by Red Fox Coffee

Within the Alto Mayo protected forest lies Beirut. Alto Mayo, which spans the border between the San Martin and Amazonas departments of Northern Peru, ranges from 800-3400 masl and is home to a huge cross-section of native Peruvian wildlife as well as some of the country’s most stellar coffees. While our original roots were in Southern Peru, it was the coffee-growing project within Alto Mayo that drew us into the north. In Southern Peru, the coffees were fantastic, but the areas’ remoteness and inaccessibility created a lack of market access that we’ve worked to remedy year over year. In Amazonas and San Martin, while these coffees are more geographically accessible, the project of growing them in the forest, in harmony with the preexisting environment, needed and continues to need the same type of specialty market access we work to provide.

The Beirut community has an ideal climate for coffee production, with crisp cold nights and temperate days as well as an abundance of old Typica, Caturra, and Catimor. Beirut’s harvest season begins in July and ends in October. Meanwhile, the soil is replenished with Bokashi style fertilizer prepared with food waste, coffee pulp, sugarcane stalks, microorganisms from fertile soils, and guano from the islands.
The community is formed by 30 families, most of whom have road access although some have a 10 minute walk from farm to road. The fastest way to get to Beirut is to fly to Jaen's airport then drive during 5 hours via paved road.

Isaias Ruiz comes from an old coffee-growing family in the community of Beirut. At 32 years old, he continues to work with his family to renew his seedlings and maintain the original variety of the area, Typica. He cares a lot about maintaining the area's native trees such as cedar and Ishpingo. Isaias began to produce coffee on his own farm, Los Frutales, in 2014. At that time, all the coffee harvested was sold locally to buyers who never reported back to him on the quality of the coffee and who paid very low prices. Eventually, in 2016, he was able to meet new buyers like us and receive the necessary feedback to improve his coffee quality performance and gain access to higher prices.

His farm Los Frutales has an area of 1 hectare at an altitude of 1911 masl. He grows Typica, Caturra, and Catimor varieties.

After depulping, cherry is immediately transferred into wooden basins to ferment for 18 to 22 hours. Once fermentation is complete, parchment is washed with clean water then placed onto raised beds under a roofed structure with transparent sheeting for drying. All of this work shows in the end cup, which we’re excited to return to each year.