Ecuador El Sauce

Coffee Story
El Sauce comes from Quilanga, Loja, in the South of Ecuador. It is a communal lot of coffee produced by Maria Bersabe Calva, Abel Cueva and Homero Abad. The elevations in this region sit between 1700 and 2000 MASL, one of the highest in Quilanga. Our importing partners, The Coffee Quest, decided to name this lot after the town of El Sauce to give notoriety to one of the country's oldest coffee-growing regions. In 2012, like many regions of Ecuador, Quilanga suffered from serious leaf rust. Many producers lost a large part of their production. Still, due to the elevations in El Sauce, many of them could maintain a large part of their Typica plots, or "Criollo," as they call the variety locally. This lot comprises Typica and Bourbon (70%), mixing Pacas, San Salvador and Catimor (30%). The regional harvest period is between May and August. The producers generally follow a similar fermentation and drying process: 24 hours de-pulped, followed by 10-12 days of drying, depending on the weather.