PANAMA PEACHES x CREAM (COLLECTION)

This WE THE ORIGIN collection contains 2 bags of the first ever coffee exported from the highlands of Barreta, Coclé in Panama. This is an extremely rare lot of coffee. 

To commemorate this occasion, we have also included a custom WE THE ORIGIN burlap sack for this historic coffee from Barreta.

See the transparency report.

PEACHES (Roast #1): Brown Sugar and Peachy Sweetness (125g)

CREAM (Roast #2): Creamy Caramel, Honey and Roasted Nuts (125g) 

The coffee was produced by Alvaro Gonzalez, a leader and trailblazer in his community of Barreta.

Alvaro and the coffee producers of Barreta have encountered endless obstacles for the past 12 years. They've worked with passion and determination, waiting for their time to come. Finally, they can make their coffee available to the world.

Damian Reed (@everythingcoffeefun) is a Canadian expat who arrived in Panama in the 1980's as a missionary. During his travels around Panama, he found himself in the coffee regions of Barreta, Coclé.

While he was delighted by the coffee available there, he was appauled by the poverty in the community and how tiny farmers were exploited by larger coffee companies.

The farmers worked their farms to sell arabica beans for as low as 50 cents/lb, barely meeting the cost of production leaving little or nothing left to take home to their families. Their farms were tiny: 1-3 hectares

So he spearheaded a project in 2008 to help these micro-producers. He formed a co-op with a processing station.

In 2012, the opening year of the co-op, the harvest looked promising with a good crop. But then Roya (coffee leaf-rust disease) came along and wiped out 90% of farms. Most farmers lost interest and gave up. And the co-op became dysfunctional. 

But Damian was determined and didn’t give up. He kept pluggin away, tweaking and making improvements. The problem with coffee is that it takes 1-2 years before you see results of changes. 

Fast forward to 2020. We now have a new specialty coffee region that has been opened up to the world. This is mostly due to Damian's refusal to give up in the name of coffee.

We hope this is the start of something special for all of Baretta's coffee producers.

And their families who have supported them to get to this point.

To celebrate this milestone for the entire community of Barreta, and to carry on the spirit of this monumental coffee, we decided to give this coffee the special treatment it deserves.

We personally oversaw the final stages of this coffee's processing at origin.

We collaborated with the awesome Black Mountain team in Volcán, Panama.

@quielitobat @baristagallardo @agirlfrom96

@arielbatista197 @barublack_farm @blackmountainpanama

Here we sorted the coffee beans, roasted samples, did some cupping and finally packaged the coffee in burlap coffee sacks.

This was the last step before the coffee could be exported.

We took direct trade to another level by importing it ourselves in our suitcases!

Here is the transparency report for this single origin coffee, purchased via direct trade at a fair price (3x the price of commodity coffee).

It is a super-micro lot. We purchased the entire lot and only have 120 of these collections (2 x 125g) available. We should have had more available based on the quantity of coffee purchased, but we ended up saving more than we should have for ourselves, family and friends!

In order to really give this coffee the treatment it deserves, we collaborated with World Coffee Champ @karthithebarista to roast these coffees. He's a master coffee technician, blending art and science to roast coffee beans to their ultimate flavour profile. He's basically a coffee magician.

The bag in each coffee has a different flavour profile

PEACHES: Brown Sugar and Peachy Sweetness

CREAM: Creamy Caramel, Honey and Roasted Nuts

You can prepare each coffee individually or create your own custom blend. Have fun with it.

We hope you enjoy the attention to quality and details that went into this coffee at every stage from seed to cup.

We'd love to know what you think of this coffee so write to us anytime!