Description
About the Coffee Producer:
Radiant Baby is a coffee with a story that feels a little magical. Grown at Chorora farm in Ecuador’s lush Macará Valley, this lot comes from Olinka Vélez, who, alongside her sister, traded city life for something wilder and more meaningful. Their farms sit high on a steep hillside, wrapped in cloud forest and crossed by an ancient Inca road, with sweeping views that stretch all the way to Peru.
Since planting their first trees in 2010, they have poured everything into this land. What began as a life change quickly became an obsession with quality, experimentation, and pushing what coffee can be.
Chorora, meaning “water well,” is part of an eight hectare project growing standout varieties like Typica Mejorado and Sidra, alongside more adventurous cultivars such as Pink Bourbon and Wush Wush. At the centre of it all is a research lab where fermentation gets the full mad scientist treatment, exploring techniques like carbonic maceration and anaerobic processing.
Radiant Baby is the result of all that energy. Bright, expressive, and a little unexpected, it is a coffee that feels alive with curiosity, care, and just the right amount of chaos.
About the Coffee Processing:
Before we talk more about the coffee processing, we have to understand how rare the varietal of Radiant Baby is. Typica Mejorado, one of Ecuador’s most distinctive cultivars, is a hybrid of Bourbon and an Ethiopian landrace. It combines the structure and sweetness of Bourbon with the floral, expressive qualities often found in Ethiopian coffees. Grown at around 1600 metres above sea level in Sozoranga, Loja, this variety develops a clean, vibrant profile shaped by the region’s cool climate and high altitude.
The processing, known as Red Washed, is where things become even more interesting. After harvest, the cherries undergo 24 hours of oxidation, followed by 72 hours of anaerobic fermentation in sealed tanks with isolated yeasts. The coffee is then depulped and inoculated again before undergoing a further 72 hours of fermentation, bringing the total to around eight days.
Once the mucilage is washed away, the parchment takes on a subtle reddish tint, which gives the process its name. The coffee is then carefully dried on raised African beds until it reaches a stable moisture level, resulting in a cup that is both precise and full of character.
Green Coffee Importer: Makicuna