Enrique’s farm Finca Chelín is renowned for his high-quality lots, ranging in multitudes of experimentational ferments of high cost and quality varietals. Enrique is highly influential in Oaxaca, and delivers educational training, talks, and access to buyers for other producers in the region. Enrique’s focus is creating a name for Oaxacan coffees, that are incredibly high quality, and delicious.
The way that honeys are processed and named at Chelin is a little different to most honey processing nomenclature. Rather than simply removing varying amounts of mucilage for black, red, and white honeys, Enrique removes the same amount of mucilage across all honeys regardless of ‘colour’.
For this coffee cherries are picked very ripe (dark red - purple, ideally around 26°Brix). After floaters are removed, clean cherries rest in concrete tanks until the evening of the next day, after the day’s picking is complete (roughly 30 hours of rest). They are then depulped and transported to concrete tanks to ferment (just as if they were going to become washed coffees). Early the next morning they are put out to dry (first for 2 days under direct sun, to enhance tartaric acidity and a complex fruity profile, then under shade). Thus, the coffee undergoes 3 different types of fermentation. The first resting in cherry and then depulped fermentation in the tank, which increases malic acidity and flavours of ripe fruits.
