COSMIC TRUTH, Ecuador

Orange, Lemon Balm, Biscoff

Palanda belongs to cocoa. It has for generations. The soils here are dense and yielding, worked by those who understood what this land demands long before coffee had any place within it.

Felipe Luzón has understood it since childhood. He planted his first trees at eight years old and brought in his first harvest at twelve. Coffee was never a casual pursuit. It was something inherited, and something he chose to carry forward with care.

Over years of deliberate work, he established improved and hybrid Typica varieties across a region with no precedent for them. Typica carries one of the oldest lineages in Arabica coffee, tracing back to southwestern Ethiopia before moving through centuries of trade and colonial routes to reach the Americas. It is not a forgiving variety. Low yielding and highly susceptible to disease, it has been replaced across much of the world by cultivars that are easier to grow and cheaper to maintain. Those who continue to work with it do so by choice, and that choice demands discipline. In Palanda, where the variety carries no established history, the undertaking is rarer still.

The Bracamoros Regional Coffee Competition has recognised the results. In 2025, Luzón refines each stage of post-harvest processing alongside technical expertise, drawing further from what this land holds.

What this soil gives, he has earned.