Peru El Milagro, Justin Hartman + Zoe Kurjiaka (top row, middle)
Peru El Milagro
Snapshot:This coffee highlights toffee and carmel notes with a touch of candied lemon zest and a rich fudge body.
OZO Coffee is excited about the release of a single origin Peru. Coming from the Cajamarca region in San Jose de Lourdes, this cup is soft and round with notes of chocolate covered nuts and sweet lemon; the perfect, easy sipping coffee. The name El Milagro, meaning ‘The Miracle’ in Spanish, originates from a tale of the recent past. Prior to 2020, all vehicles, persons, and things, had to traverse the river Chinchipe via an elevated pulley system that could only carry one car at a time. It was a slow and extremely dangerous process, some would even call it a miracle. Today, the river is fitted with a large, state of the art, two-lane bridge, making access to the area much more efficient and safe.
Old bridge…
New bridge!
Back in September of 2022, Green Buyer Zoe Kurjiaka and CEO Justin Hartman visited El Milagro and were inspired by what they saw. Across the rushing Rio Chinchipe, up long dirt roads that twist and turn, you can find the collection facility for the co-op. The warehouse has an office, quaint cupping lab, and storage space. El Milagro functions as a collection site and quality evaluation site; milling and processing happens at farm level. El Milagro can hold up to 1,650 bags of parchment at a time on site with an annual total production of roughly 5,500 bags of exportable coffee. This past year, OZO purchased 550 bags which is 10% of their total production.
This is inside the El Milagro collection warehouse where we are discussing cupping scores.
All coffee contributed through the El Milagro co-op is certified Fair Trade Organic coffee. This coffee is certified Fair Trade Organic and OZO pays a premium for it. While visiting El Milagro, we were able to see the impact of purchasing coffees with this premium. In 2022, El Milagro was given a total of $15,000 USD in grants. They decided to build both a cuy-cuy farm (guinea pig) and two trout tanks for breeding. Both of these builds offer additional sources of income to the co-op members. They are able to breed these animals and sell them in local markets where demand is higher than production.
These are the trout tanks their FTO grant was able to build
Year after year, El Milagro delivers high quality, consistent coffees and that is why OZO continues to partner with them. The strides in quality they have made over the years and obstacles they have managed to overcome shows their resilience and drive to constantly improve. El Milagro is a miracle.
This is Agenor Garcia Carrion, Head of Quality Control at El Milagro and coffee producer
Within the collection warehouse in front of the cupping lab (Control de Calidad) and office (Oficinas)