Within the Alto Mayo protected forest lies Beirut. Alto Mayo, which spans the border between the San Martin and Amazonas departments of Northern Peru, ranges from 800-3400 masl and is home to a huge cross-section of native Peruvian wildlife as well as some of the country’s most stellar coffees.
While our original roots were in Southern Peru, it was the coffee-growing project within Alto Mayo that drew us into the north. In Southern Peru, the coffees were fantastic, but the areas’ remoteness and inaccessibility created a lack of market access that we’ve worked to remedy year over year. In Amazonas and San Martin, while these coffees are more geographically accessible, the project of growing them in the forest, in harmony with the preexisting environment, needed and continues to need the same type of specialty market access we work to provide.
The coffees grown in this region are precious and unique, as are the challenges faced by the local communities growing them within the container of the forest environment. Once, this area, despite being a protected forest, was the site of slash-and-burn farming practices. Since 2011, Conservation International has sought to halt deforestation by working with local communities to protect the forest through agricultural training. As of 2020, deforestation in the Alto Mayo Protected Forest had declined by 59%. The conservation model pioneered in Alto Mayo has been so successful that the Peruvian government has implemented similar agreements in 35 other protected areas.
The Beirut subregion has an ideal climate for coffee production, with crisp cold nights and temperate days as well as an abundance of old Typica, Caturra, and Catimor. Beirut’s harvest season begins in July and ends in October. Meanwhile, the soil is replenished with Bokashi style fertilizer prepared with food waste, coffee pulp, sugarcane stalks, microorganisms from fertile soils, and guano from the islands. After depulping, cherry is immediately transferred into wooden basins to ferment. Once fermentation is complete, parchment is washed with clean water then placed onto raised beds under a roofed structure with transparent sheeting for drying. All of this work shows in the end cup, which we’re excited to return to each year.
