Background
Tulipe and Nanegal are neighbouring Parishes located 80 Km North West from Quito. This area is strongly represented by the ruins of the ancestral people who inhabited this area since 800 BC, the `Yumbos’. The ruins of Tulipe is an old ceremonial site where the architecture, geometry and believes of the Yumbos are reflected.
The Yumbos endured the conquests of the Incas and Spanish by playing a non-threatening role of merchants, offering agricultural goods and access to trading routes from the coast to the high Andes. Their disappearance is thought that was caused partly by the disease brought by the colonisers, followed by a strong eruption of the Pichincha volcano in 1660. Today, Tulipe and Nanegal are touristic and agricultural areas, producing mainly sugar cane and cattle.
This parish turned into a major agricultural area after the agrarian reform of 1964, when smallholdings became more accessible to independent farmers and agriculture became less controlled by big land-owners.
It was only around 20 years back that coffee started being farmed in considerable amounts in this area. Since then, it has become the producer of one of the finest coffees in the country, with very sweet and fruity profiles.
Process
The producers of this blend are small farmers who are implementing modern techniques of producing coffee to obtain a product of higher quality and therefore a better price for it. Grown between 1200 and 1600m, washed and dried in each producers’ land, blended carefully by Q-Grader Alfonso Villagomez in Quito.
This coffee has a traditional washed process, where the cherries were pulped, then placed to ferment for 12 hours in tanks. After this, the parchment coffee was washed and placed to dry on African beds inside ‘Marquesinas’ or polytunnels.