It’s Time To Plan For Bolivia!

Team MCM is thrilled to be visiting Bolivia next month, where we’ll spend time with the Rodríguez family of Agricafe Bolivia and the Sol de la Mañana producers whose coffees we regularly purchase. While on the ground, Aislinn will be selecting coffees from the current season and catching up on how the harvest is progressing. Before she heads off, we want to hear from you to help us build our buying brief and accurately plan for the 2024 season.

Published 20 Aug 2024

In just a couple of weeks, Aislinn is heading to Bolivia! Spending time with our good friends Pedro, Daniela and Pedro Pablo Rodríguez is always a treat and their stunning farms are some of our favourites to visit. With the weather stabilising after last year’s hot and dry harvest, and this year’s harvest arriving early, Agricafe have high hopes for better yields from the 2024 crop. Cooler nights have also allowed coffee cherries to mature at a slower rate, ensuring great sweetness and complexity in the fruit and heralding high quality for the season.

While in the country, Aislinn will visit several small holder farmers who take part in the Sol de la Mañana program — who are in good spirits after a less challenging and more plentiful harvest than in recent years. Many of these producers have begun delivering whole cherry to Agricafe’s Buena Vista wet mill for processing, where their coffee’s quality and consistency benefit from the continuous upgrades the Rogriquez family have made to the facility. This year, Agricafe have added a new depulper that sorts beans by density and installed water sorters that are more efficient. We’re excited to see these in action during the trip, and to taste the great coffees they produce!

When selecting this year’s washed Caturra lots, our focus will be on finding classic Bolivian coffees with intense sweetness, great clarity and balanced acidity, that will produce exceptional filter or single origin espresso offerings. Aislinn will also be cupping a number of the rare variety and specially prepared microlots that Agricafe are so well-known for. For these, we’ll look for dazzling coffees that are distinct and unique, with high intensity and complexity of flavour, a refined cup profile, and a ‘taste of place’ retained within. 

Before Aislinn departs, we want you to let us know what you are interested in for your Bolivian line up! Whether you would like to feature a particular offering you have loved in the past, or to brief us in on your preferred flavour profile, regional characteristics or intended volumes, our team is on hand to discuss what you’re after. Our Bolivian offerings always garner heaps of interest, often selling out ahead of landing, so make sure you don’t sleep on sending us your requests!