EXHUMATION RITES, Bolivia
Blood Orange, Milk Chocolate, Caramel
| Producer | Jhonny Corina |
| Farm | Finca La Asunta |
| Region | Sud Yungas, La Paz |
| Varietal | Java |
| Processing | Washed |
| Altitude | 1,500 MASL |
The Yungas is where the Andes break into jungle. East of La Paz the mountains fall away into steep, fog-bound valleys, the roads cut narrow into the rock. Coffee here is grown on a long frontier, where farmers have been pressed to turn from the coca leaf toward a crop they can sell whole.
In Sud Yungas, Jhonny Corina works Finca La Asunta at 1,500 metres, a small holding taken from near-vertical ground. It is one grower on one farm, in an origin whose output has thinned to a fraction of what it once was.
The tree is Java, an Ethiopian landrace that travelled by way of the island that named it and later Cameroon before reaching South America late in the last century. Tall, slow to bear and thin in yield, it is planted by few. Here it is recovered from ground that was meant to keep it.
Corina works it in the traditional washed method. Ripe cherry is depulped, fermented under watch, washed clean to the parchment and dried slowly until the structure sets. The washed road grants no cover. The bloodline speaks unaccompanied.
