455 Bolivia Dario Caisina Quino Caturra/Catuai

＜Dario Caisina Quino＞

One of Bolivia’s best-known coffee-producing regions is Caranavi, located at the gateway to the Amazon rainforest. At Philocoffea, we work with coffees from the Rodriguez family every year, including popular coffees such as Alasitas, which are produced in this region. The climate is hot and humid, and the environment feels more like a tropical rainforest than farmland. At the same time, the high elevations and diverse microclimates found throughout the region allow coffees with a wide range of characteristics to be produced.

However, Bolivia’s coffee industry has not had an easy path. Due to changes in government policy, pests, and other challenges, coffee production has declined by approximately 80% over the past decade. Today, Bolivia exports only around 1,200 tons of coffee, making it a very small and relatively rare origin in the global coffee market.

The Rodriguez family has supported Bolivia’s coffee industry for many years. More than 30 years ago, they began operating Buena Vista Wet Mill in Caranavi, processing coffee produced by farmers in the surrounding area. However, as they witnessed the country’s coffee production decline significantly, they began to worry that coffee might eventually disappear from Bolivia. This led them to start growing coffee themselves.

Today, they own eight different plots in Caranavi, located between 1,400 and 1,650 meters above sea level, where they produce high-quality coffee using modern farming practices.

But their goal was not simply to produce better coffee themselves. They wanted to share the knowledge of cultivation and processing that they had developed over many years with other producers in the region, with the hope of revitalizing Bolivia’s coffee industry as a whole.

This vision led to the creation of the Sol de la Manana project, which means “morning sun” in Spanish.

The project began in 2013 with around 10 producers from a small rural community in the mountains above Caranavi. The program was designed as a kind of “school for coffee producers,” with a structured curriculum covering everything from how to establish nurseries and manage farms to fertilization methods and timing, pruning, and the selection of harvested cherries.

Before the project began, the average yield was only around 2.5 bags per hectare per producer. As the farmers began applying the techniques they learned, yields improved significantly. Pedro Rodriguez and his team continue to regularly visit participating producers, providing technical support and advice.

These efforts have received international recognition, and in 2019, the project received the SCA Sustainability Award.

Rather than focusing only on producing great coffee themselves, the Rodriguez family chose to share the knowledge they had gained over many years with other producers. Their goal was to create an environment where farmers could continue producing coffee and make a sustainable living from it, while helping carry Bolivia’s coffee industry into the future.

One of the producers who has been part of Sol de la Manana since its early days is Dario, the producer behind this coffee.

Dario joined the project around 2014. At the time, coffee farms in Bolivia were suffering serious losses from coffee leaf rust, and many small-scale producers were considering giving up coffee production and switching to coca cultivation.

Amid these difficult circumstances, Dario became one of more than 100 pioneer farmers who studied coffee cultivation at the Producer School operated by the Rodriguez family.

The results gradually began to show. He became one of the first producers to increase his yields from around 5–10 bags per hectare to more than 20 bags per hectare. At the same time, he began consistently producing specialty-grade coffee scoring above 85 points.

One of the most important aspects of Dario’s coffee production is slow drying.

Rather than drying the coffee quickly under strong, direct sunlight, he covers the raised beds with shade netting and dries the coffee slowly in the shade. He also carefully manages airflow through the drying beds, allowing moisture to be removed gradually and in a controlled manner.

This careful drying process is believed to contribute to the smooth texture that remains even as the coffee cools, as well as its rich flavors. In the high-altitude environment, where humidity can fluctuate significantly, slow drying can also help reduce the impact of these changes, protect the endosperm inside the seed, and improve the coffee’s stability during storage.

The process used for this coffee is washed, but anaerobic fermentation is also incorporated during processing. After the pulp is removed from the harvested cherries, the coffee undergoes 24 hours of anaerobic fermentation before being slowly dried to finish the process.

The Rodriguez family began working to preserve Bolivia’s coffee industry. Sol de la Manana was created to share their knowledge with producers in the region. And Dario has continued to improve both the quality and productivity of his coffee by learning through the project.

Behind every cup is a story of knowledge and skills being passed from one person to another over many years.

Now, let me share a little about the story behind our roast at Philocoffea.

When I first looked at the green beans, the moisture content was around 11%, which is relatively high. At the same time, the density was not particularly hard.

At first, I thought, “I don’t want to scorch this coffee,” so I applied heat gently during the early stage of the roast. However, when I tasted it, I felt that the texture still had a slight roughness.

For the next roast, I thought, “If the beans have this much moisture, maybe we can make better use of it,” and applied more heat from the beginning. This time, the reactions progressed well, but the acidity became a little darker and heavier than I wanted.

In the end, I tried to find the balance somewhere between those two approaches. I applied heat gently at the beginning and then increased it more firmly during the middle of the roast, using the moisture inside the beans to help drive the reactions.

Even with the same green coffee, changing the way heat is applied can change the texture and the way the acidity appears. For me, finding the point where a particular coffee tastes its best is one of the most interesting parts of roasting.

Just before I started writing this, Sato, who was working on the brewing recipe for our shop, told me, “Bolivia is really good! The texture is great!”

I was honestly very happy to hear that. Texture was one of the things I had been paying particular attention to in this roast, so hearing those words made me especially happy.

When I tasted it again, I found a soft citrus fruit character, along with a gentle sweetness reminiscent of honey and walnuts. The texture is neither too light nor too heavy. It moves smoothly across the palate, making you naturally want to take another sip.

Compared with just after roasting, the citrus-like acidity and sweetness become clearer as the coffee ages, while the herbal character typical of Bolivian coffee is pleasantly wrapped in that sweetness.

This may not be the kind of coffee that immediately grabs your attention with an intense or flashy character.

But it has a soft fruitiness, gentle sweetness, and a smooth, comfortable texture. Before you know it, you may find yourself wanting to drink it again the next day.

That, to me, is part of its appeal: it naturally fits into everyday life.

And when I think about the work behind Sol de la Manana, I also find myself thinking about what comes after simply delivering a delicious cup of coffee.

What we can do at Philocoffea is not simply introduce coffees like this once and move on. We can continue to purchase the coffees we truly enjoy and keep sharing them with you.

If that, in turn, helps producers like Dario continue producing coffee, and contributes in some small way to the future of the coffee industry in Bolivia that the Rodriguez family has been working to support, that would make us very happy.

A coffee that you want to drink every day can also become part of a future for the people who produce it.

We hope you enjoy this coffee as part of your everyday life, and that you can also feel a little of the story behind every cup.