Nearly every year since 2004, Counter Culture has offered our wholesale partners and staff an immersive, week-long educational experience: the Origin Field Lab.
Nearly every year since 2004, Counter Culture has offered our wholesale partners and staff an immersive, week-long educational experience: the Origin Field Lab. It's a chance to see, firsthand, the journey coffee takes from farm to export, and an opportunity to build connections between our suppliers, customers, and staff. This year we returned to Northern Peru to visit our partners Cenfrocafe and Origin Coffee Lab, who were incredibly generous with their time and knowledge. Here's a brief recap of what we experienced:
Cenfrocafe![]()
We began our journey at Cenfrocafe, one of the largest coffee cooperatives in Peru and our partner since 2007. After a presentation on the cooperative's history, we learned about their process of receiving coffee from thousands of small farms and sorting it into different quality tiers through physical analysis and cupping. From there, we toured their dry mill, the final stage of coffee's journey before export, where large-scale machines remove coffee's parchment layer, filter out debris, and sort it by density and color. We ended the day at Cenfrocafe's roasting facility, where they roast coffee for the domestic market. This very informative day, learning about the systems Cenfrocafe has in place to maintain consistency and quality at this scale.
La Palestina
The next day we joined our export partner, Origin Coffee Lab, to visit Finca La Palestina, a beautiful farm in San Jose del Alto that we've purchased from since 2018. The Alarcon family hosted us, showing us around their farm and giving us a hands-on introduction to picking and processing coffee. Perhaps the most unique part of the visit was their apiaries, home to Melipona bees — a stingless species native to Peru whose honey is pri. This honey can only be harvested by hand, an ounce or two at a time. We got to help harvest some and learn how the bees contribute to pollination on the farm. The apiary was funded through Counter Culture's Seeds grant program in 2024, and it was exciting to see the project already thriving.
Origin Coffee Lab (OCL)
We spent a day at Origin Coffee Lab's headquarters in Jaén learning about their process for receiving and evaluating coffee. Each of us took a sample from OCL's warehouse, and Mariagracia Echeandia, OCL's Operations Manager, walked us through their evaluation process: hand-sorting for defects, calculating the percentage of exportable green, taking moisture readings, and checking the coffee under UV light for inconsistencies. Each participant then sample-roasted and cupped their own coffee. The day closed with a presentation from OCL founder Pepe Rivera, covering the company's history and broader trends shaping the industry. Pepe has a long history working in specialty coffee, both in the US and Peru, and was the SCA's 2023 Sustainability Award recipient. He has a unique perspective on coffee, and it was fascinating to learn from him and his team about why they do what they do.
Finca La Pomarrosa
Our last farm visit was to Finca La Pomarrosa, a family farm in the Colasay District that overlooks “La Viuda,” a mountain which is the namesake of a fan-favorite single-origin offering we source from this area. The farm is run by Merci Fernandez, a third-generation coffee farmer, and her father, Don Felix. Merci returned to the family farm after studying agronomy and working in Origin Coffee Lab's cupping lab, bringing a long-term vision to grow the farm's volume and quality over her lifetime. It was inspiring to hear her story and spend time with her family. We navigated steep, muddy terrain up and down the mountain, a memorable reminder of how physically demanding coffee farming can be. We also saw one of the solar dryers funded through a 2024 Seeds grant. These covered drying systems help farmers to dry coffee more consistently despite recent heavy rainfall during harvest, and it was great to see one in action and hear how it's improved post-harvest processing on the farm.
Lima
We ended the trip in Lima, where we were able to watch the World Cup Final and experience some of Lima’s culinary scene with a celebratory group dinner. The next morning we visited Demo, a bakery and coffee shop in Lima’s Barranco district and, to our surprise, found them pouring an SL-9 variety separation from Finca La Palestina, the same farm we'd visited days before. It was a full-circle way to end the trip before everyone headed home.
Acknowledgements
This year’s Origin Field Lab was an incredible experience and couldn't have asked for a better group. Special thanks to our partners: The Monroe, Ancient Grounds Coffee, Brew Birds and Walnut Family Bakery for sending your best and brightest on this trip. Another big thanks to our partners at Cenfrocafe and Origin Coffee Lab, for sharing your time and talents with our group. Lastly, thank you to the Alarcon family at Finca La Palestina and The Fernandez family at Finca La Pomarrosa for opening your homes to us, sharing the work you do and an excellent meal.
If you are a wholesale partner of Counter Culture and you think you’d like to attend a trip like this, reach out to your account manager for more information on how to apply for next year's trip!
