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Every bag of Easy Jose Coffee has a real person behind it. Someone who has picked, carried, sorted, dried and cared for the coffee long before it reaches our roastery.
For the first story in our Meet the Grower series, we’d love you to meet Dalia.
Dalia is part of the Mayni community in the Peruvian Amazon, where coffee is grown beneath the rainforest canopy rather than in place of it.
For Dalia, coffee is not something separate from the forest — it is part of it. And she takes enormous pride in every step of the process, personally involved from the moment the cherries are picked through to the final stages of drying and selection.
As Dalia puts it:
“In Mayni, we value the forest greatly. The forest gives us food, medicine and dyes for our clothing. The forest is life.”
That belief sits at the heart of her coffee.
Coffee That Protects the Rainforest
In many parts of the world, coffee farming has meant clearing land, stripping away biodiversity and replacing forest with neat rows of crop. But Dalia’s coffee is different.
Her farm is part of the Mayni project built around keeping the forest intact. No slash and burn. No removing the rainforest to make room for coffee. Instead, the coffee grows within the landscape that already exists, beneath the canopy and alongside the plants, animals and resources the community depends on.
For us, that matters deeply.
This is not just about producing a beautiful cup of coffee, although Dalia certainly does that. It’s about proving that exceptional coffee can help protect a way of life, support indigenous communities and keep rainforest standing.
The Work Behind Every Cup
The coffee in your cup begins with an enormous amount of physical work.
Coffee cherries are picked by hand, and only the ripest are selected. In the Mayni community, each family tends coffee on different slopes across the hills and mountains. Once picked, the cherries must be carried down into the valley and up again to the central processing area, often at altitudes of around 1,800 to 2,000 metres.
To produce one kilo of green coffee, around six kilos of coffee cherries need to be moved.
That means every harvest involves months of careful picking, carrying, sorting and processing. It is slow, skilled work, done in a forest environment that can be beautiful but challenging. The canopy gives life and shade, but it also means uneven ground, falling branches, snakes and the constant patience required to work with nature rather than trying to control it.
Dalia’s favourite parts of the process are the harvest, drying and selection.
“These are the most important stages in ensuring that customers receive good-quality coffee. I love taking care of it.”
Dalia’s Honey Process
Dalia’s coffee is honey processed, a method that brings out sweetness and clarity in her coffee.
After the cherries are picked, the fruit is removed but some of the sticky natural sugars, known as mucilage, are left around the bean. Instead of washing this away, the coffee is dried slowly with the sugars still attached.
Dalia is closely involved here too. She monitors the coffee as it dries, turning it by hand every day on raised beds and checking how it is developing. It is a process that demands constant attention over two to three weeks.
In Dalia’s cup, you can expect notes of stone fruit, honey and white grape, with a clarity that reflects the care taken from forest to drying bed, to the roastery.
A Partnership Built Over Time
We’ve been lucky enough to spend time with Dalia during our visits to the Mayni community. She has welcomed us onto her farm, introduced us to her family, shown us how she produces her coffee and spoken with us about life in a community where the rainforest is an integral part of everyday life.
What has stayed with us the most is her pride.
Pride in her home. Pride in her family. Pride in the forest. Pride in producing coffee that people on the other side of the world will drink and enjoy.
Our relationship with Dalia and the Mayni community is not based on a one time purchase. It’s a long-term partnership. We return year after year, and we pay above the market price, because we believe the people doing this work deserve stability, respect and a fair return for their coffee.
That stability matters. It helps families continue to invest in their community, their children’s education and their future, without being forced into choices that would mean giving up their land or losing the forest around them.
This is not charity. It is coffee done better.
Dalia’s coffee is a reminder that coffee can be more than a daily habit. It can be a connection between communities, between landscapes, and between the person who picked each cherry and the person brewing it at home.
When you next drink Dalia’s coffee, you’ll know exactly whose hands picked every cherry.
And we think that makes the cup taste even better.
