Producer: Leonidas Asdrubal Apolo
Farm: Nueva Vida
Region: Puyango, Loja
Altitude: 1,250 masl
Varietal: Sarchimor, Acauã
Process: Honey
Roast: Light
Notes: Yellow Apple, Almond, Cocoa Powder

Nueva Vida is truly a small-scale family operation. Aside from Asdrubal, his daughter Mireya, and her husband Freddie, the family employs 3-4 pickers during harvest. Asdrubal provides them with a weekly wage rather than paying based on the weight of cherries picked.

All his coffee cherry is honey processed on raised and covered beds. The cherry is floated and then fermented in covered tanks for 70 hours. It is then depulped without water and taken straight to the raised beds where it is rotated during a two-week drying period. The current lot is predominantly Sarchimor and Acauã.

Along with his daughter, Mireya, and her husband Freddie, Asdrubal works his five-hectare farm near Puyango in Loja, the southwesternmost region in Ecuador. Fifteen years ago he had a different farm in a neighboring area that was destroyed by frost. Asdrubal has always loved coffee, so when he had the opportunity in 2017 to buy this farm he didn’t hesitate. His father had taught him about coffee production as a teen. He used to manually crush-mill and sell to the local market until Caravela arrived in the area.

Following our discovery of Asdrubal's coffee via Caravela in 2022, we jumped at the chance to visit the farm in September 2023. This is the second harvest that we have purchased directly from Asdrubal, purchasing the entirety of his output for the second year in a row.