Bolivia Caranavi Coffee

High-elevation coffee from Caranavi, the coffee hub of Bolivia's Yungas, where steep green valleys drop toward the Amazon. The cup is soft fruit and floral notes with caramel sweetness and a cocoa finish.

Origin & Story

Caranavi is in the Yungas, the steep, green, cloud-wrapped valleys where the Bolivian Andes fall toward the Amazon basin, in the department of La Paz. In the 1960s its land was offered to indigenous groups to grow coffee, and importers now describe it as the leading coffee producer in Bolivia, responsible for the large majority of the country's specialty coffee.

Coffee grows here at altitudes that routinely pass 1,700 meters, with some farms reaching almost 2,000, in fertile soil and with a wide swing between warm days and cool nights. Across Bolivia, coffee is grown between roughly 800 and 2,300 meters, so Caranavi's farms sit at the higher end of the range.

Bolivia's coffee industry is small and organized around cooperatives. Importers describe Coproca in Caranavi, Cenaproc and Cafenorte running quality programs and processing; the San Juan cooperative, formed in 1974 by 40 farmers committed to small family farms and organic methods; and Agricafe's Sol de la Mañana program, a group of 100 smallholders whose yields have risen from two to four bags per hectare to more than twenty.

By the mid-2000s Bolivia was hosting an annual Cup of Excellence competition, and international interest in the Yungas grew with it. In the cup, Caranavi's altitude shows as floral, soft-fruit notes, with caramel and cocoa underneath.

Reading the Flavor Profile

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