Which coffee producing regions explain Bolivia's low output?

Bolivia's coffee production has fallen by roughly seventy percent over the past decade, shrinking the country to a minor supplier despite high-altitude farms that yield floral, fruity, and intensely aromatic beans. Coca leaf cultivation policies, leaf rust outbreaks, and the cancellation of the COE competition have combined to make farming difficult for local growers.

Coffee has been grown in Bolivia since around 1880, when a few large farms north of La Paz controlled nearly all output. The country remains one of the poorest coffee origins, and its main coffee producing regions sit at high elevation, which shapes the layered aroma. A cacao natural Java lot from the Waliki Estate shows how estate-level java process coffee can taste.

On the coffee map of South America, beyond Brazil and Colombia, Bolivia also produces coffee beans of outstanding quality. This landlocked country has a high-altitude growing environment, and its coffee aroma is rich and unique, often with floral and fruity notes. However, over the past decade or so, Bolivia's coffee production has plummeted by seventy percent, reducing it to a minor coffee country. Factors such as coca leaf cultivation policies, leaf rust infestations, and the cancellation of the COE competition have intertwined to make life difficult for local coffee farmers. Today, Front Street Coffee takes you on an in-depth look at the history, main producing regions, cultivated varieties, and processing methods of Bolivian coffee, and highlights a cacao natural Java coffee bean from the Waliki Estate, presenting its flavor profile in full from the estate's story to roasting and brewing parameters.

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Many countries in South America produce coffee beans. Besides such familiar names as Brazilian coffee and Colombian coffee, Front Street Coffee would like to introduce another South American country that also produces coffee beans of excellent quality—Bolivia. Bolivia's coffee-growing environment is completely different from Brazil's low altitudes, and Front Street Coffee has always believed that altitude plays a decisive role in coffee flavor. Bolivian coffee's aroma is rich in layers and highly recognizable; whether it is the dry fragrance after grinding or the wet aroma after brewing, it comes across as quite vivid and intense, resembling an interweaving of floral and fruity aromas that is unforgettable at first scent.

Bolivian Coffee History

Bolivia is located inland in South America, bordering Brazil and Colombia. Its capital, La Paz, sits at an altitude of over 3,600 meters, making it the highest capital in the world. Bolivia is indeed the poorest coffee-producing country in the world, even poorer than Ethiopia. In addition to lacking access to the sea, the local government's severe corruption is also an important reason why the country's economy is in trouble.

The history of coffee cultivation in Bolivia can be traced back to 1880, when production was almost entirely in the hands of several large farm owners north of La Paz. In 1991, the government launched a plan to encourage indigenous people to participate in coffee cultivation, but it did not place importance on quality.

For Bolivian coffee farmers, the core difficulty has always been obtaining enough income to sustain coffee cultivation over the long term. To make up for insufficient coffee earnings, they have had to grow other crops, the most important of which is coca leaf. Coca leaf can be used to make cocaine, and in Bolivia, growing coca is legal. Encouraged by the government, the profit from coca leaf reached four times that of coffee, and it was far easier to grow than coffee, which led a large number of farmers to abandon coffee for coca, or even to abandon farming altogether.

Coca cultivation requires large amounts of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, causing severe damage to the soil. In other words, after several years of growing coca, the land becomes barren and can no longer grow other crops. In the early 2000s, the United States provided substantial aid to Bolivian agriculture, but later, because the Bolivian government supported coca cultivation, relations between the two countries deteriorated, and coffee farmers became the biggest victims. Afterward, against the backdrop of Bolivia resuming limited anti-drug operations, many aid programs were restarted, such as the COE (Cup of Excellence), which was held with the support of USAID.

As if these blows were not enough, an outbreak of leaf rust in 2013 (a fungus that attacks coffee leaves, preventing coffee trees from photosynthesizing) caused Bolivia to lose 50% of its coffee production that year alone. With the combined impact of the government's coca leaf policy and leaf rust, Bolivia's coffee production fell by 70% over the past decade, and the country was completely reduced to a minor coffee-producing nation.

Bolivian Coffee Producing Regions

Bolivia's most famous producing region is La Paz, covering areas such as Caranavi, Yungas, and Inquisivi.

Yungas is located in Caranavi Province, northeast of the city of La Paz. 95% of Bolivia's coffee is produced here. This region extends along the eastern slopes of the Andes, with vast forests and fertile land, and its rainy, humid, and warm climate provides favorable conditions for coffee cultivation. The altitude range is between 800 and 1,800 meters. This area is best known for one of the most dangerous roads in the world, nicknamed the "Death Road," Yongas Road, also known as "the world's most dangerous road."

Coffee Cultivation

Coffee production in Bolivia is mainly based on a smallholder system, with 23,000 small farms nationwide ranging from 2 to 9 hectares. What is rather unusual is that about 40% of Bolivia's coffee is sold domestically. In addition, almost all coffee cultivation in Bolivia is organic.

Cultivated Varieties

The main varieties are Arabica, including Typica, Caturra, Catuai, and Catimor. The harvest season runs from July to November.

Catimor

This is a cross between Timor and Caturra, discovered in Portugal in 1959. Its taste is distinct and easy to identify, with astringency amid bitterness and acidity, and a salty aftertaste that often appears. It has high planting density, strong resistance to leaf rust, and high yield. In the past, Latin America planted Catimor in large quantities on the advice of agricultural experts.

Processing Methods

Bolivian farmers mainly use the washed method to process green beans, and occasionally sun-dried or honey processing. It is worth mentioning that because Bolivia's climate is colder than that of other coffee-origin countries, many farmers choose machine drying rather than sun drying.

Tomorrow's Sun Project

The Tomorrow's Sun Project is an initiative to comprehensively improve Bolivian coffee. It requires substantial funds and effort to guide smallholders, covering technical support, breeding, pruning, harvesting, and other key techniques, while purchasing smallholders' coffee at high prices, allowing farmers' income and quality to enter a virtuous cycle of sustainable operation.

COE

From the 1990s to the 2000s, development projects funded by foreign aid established coffee washing stations and provided farmers with training on properly harvesting and drying coffee so that only high-quality beans were selected, preventing fermentation and maintaining quality. These training programs enabled coffee farmers at the time to participate in the COE competition, but only between 2004 and 2009.

After 2009, Bolivia's COE competition was canceled because the Bolivian national government was strongly anti-American and did not want USAID to fund more development programs in Bolivia, and there was no other source of funding to support the COE program.

Bolivia Waliki Estate Cacao Natural Java

Coffee region: La Paz

Growing altitude: 1,600 meters

Coffee variety: Java

Processing method: Coco natural

This Bolivian coffee bean comes from a small estate called Waliki. The name is inspired by a local greeting meaning "How is everything?", to which the answer is "All good" or "Hakuna Matata." Waliki Estate is located in the Bolinda colony, in a dense and steep valley about 10 kilometers outside the town of Caranavi in La Paz, Bolivia.

The Bolinda colony was established 52 years ago and was once called Bolivia Linda, or Beautiful Bolivia. Years later, the name was shortened to Bolinda, and today it is one of the larger settlements in the area.

Waliki Estate is owned by the Rodriguez family. The Rodriguez family owns a family business called Agricafe, which produces coffee from its own estates and also purchases high-quality small-lot crops from small producers in the Yungas region.

Waliki Estate covers 3.62 hectares at an altitude of 1,600 meters. This high altitude helps ensure the slow ripening of the coffee fruit. The slow ripening process increases the concentration of sugars in the coffee fruit, thereby helping the coffee become sweeter.

Waliki Estate

It is worth mentioning that, as noted earlier, Bolivia has not placed enough importance on coffee cultivation, resulting in scarce production, but Front Street Coffee specifically selected this Java coffee bean from Waliki Estate. On the one hand, this is due to the uniqueness of the coffee variety; on the other hand, Front Street Coffee sees the estate's professionalism and emphasis on quality.

During the harvest season, the estate hires pickers from the Bolinda community to carefully select coffee fruit during picking. These pickers are trained to pick only ripe coffee fruit, and the estate picks in multiple rounds during the harvest season to ensure that the coffee fruit is picked at optimal ripeness. The estate uses crates, which ensure that the coffee is not damaged during transport while also keeping the coffee fruit ventilated to prevent unnecessary early fermentation. After selection and weighing, the coffee fruit is carefully washed, placed on raised African drying beds to dry, and then turned every hour. After about a week, the coffee fruit is placed in a cacao dryer.

Front Street Coffee found that the estate uses a cacao dryer for coffee bean processing. The Rodriguez family has been innovating and experimenting with different processing techniques, and discovered that a cacao dryer can dry coffee beans slowly and consistently at low temperatures, thereby reducing the impact of weather conditions. The coffee beans are placed in large steel drums at a temperature not exceeding 40 degrees Celsius for about 35 hours, turning once every 30 minutes. After the coffee beans are dried, they are transported to La Paz to rest, and then hulled at Agricafe's dry mill, La Luna. The mill uses machinery for careful coffee hulling and sorting, and manual sorting is also required under ultraviolet and natural light.

Java Coffee Beans

Java coffee beans are locally called long-shaped beans in Bolivia because of their slender appearance, and their formal name should be Java. Java is a very interesting bean variety, and from the name alone it is clearly strongly associated with Indonesia. But in fact, Java originally came from coffee tree species in the primitive forests of Ethiopia, was collected by local peoples, and then spread through Yemen to Indonesia, where it was named Java. People originally generally thought that Java was a variety of Typica, but after genetic comparison it was found that Java actually comes from the Ethiopian coffee variety Abysinia.

After Indonesia, the Java variety first spread to the nearby Timor island group, and then to Cameroon in East Africa, where it was first released for farmers to grow in 1980. As for its spread to Central and South America, under the leadership of breeding expert Benoit Bertrand, it was introduced to Costa Rica in 1991 through CIRAD (the Centre de Cooperation Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement). The first Central American country to officially recognize the Java variety was Panama.

Java's fruit and seeds are both very long, the young shoots are bronze-colored, and the plant is quite tall, but its yield is low. It has stronger resistance to leaf rust and coffee berry disease, making it very suitable for smallholders to grow. Through cupping, Front Street Coffee found that this Java coffee bean, because of its outstanding flavor, is not inferior to Geisha.

Roasting Curve

Brewing Parameters

Coffee dose: 15 grams

Ratio: 1/15

Water temperature: 90 degrees Celsius

Grind size: 80% passing through a 0.85 mm sieve

Dripper: Hario V60 #01

Brewing Process

First pour: 30 grams of water for a 30-second bloom

Second pour: pour 95 grams of water (scale reads 125 grams), finishing in about 1 minute 05 seconds

Third pour: pour 100 grams of water (scale reads 225 grams), finishing in about 1 minute 45 seconds

Extraction time: remove the dripper at 2 minutes to finish brewing

Brewed Flavor

Slight fermentation, grape, slight nuttiness, floral, medium acidity, juicy mouthfeel

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.