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Galo knows how to produce great coffees. Although he has a family heritage of agriculture, his journey with coffee began in the cupping lab. One of the first Q graders in Ecuador, Galo became an expert coffee taster and worked with small producers in home province of Pichincha. He would taste their coffees and help them sell it to international roasters, but through this process, he learned about coffee varieties, processing methods and how they impact the final cup. This journey led him to return to his family farm, Cruz Loma, and begin planting coffee. The farm is large and grows just about everything, from sugar cane, to cabbage to coffee. This coffee is a lot I selected after cupping many different varieties and processing methods from his farm. It’s a washed geisha that is very transparent in showing the classic geisha flavours: the florals, the sweet citrus, stone fruit and an underlying sweet herbal note that gives the cup another level of complexity.
Late in 2022, I had the privilege of being part of the international jury for Ecuador’s most important coffee competition: La Taza Dorada. This is a competition where coffee producers submit samples of their coffee, and a national jury preselects the top 40 coffees. The international jury then repeats the tasting and selects the top 20 (three rounds of cuppings). The coffees are then auctioned online, with the purpose of fetching the producers a high price and some international recognition. The coffees this year were awesome, but there was one producer that really impressed me: Galo Morales. The main reason his coffee impressed me is that he submitted three lots for the competition and all three were in the top 10 for me. His top lot was ranked #2, while his other two were #11 and #12. This kind of prolific consistency is very hard for a producer to achieve.
Back to Galo’s farm. Finca Cruz Loma, and is operated by Galo and his wife, Maria Alexandra Rivera. Cruz Loma has been setting the standard for coffees from the Pichincha region of Ecuador since they started in 2014. Finca Cruz Loma is a large farm near San José de Minas, a small town in the northwestern part of Pichincha, near Quito. The farm has been in Galo’s family for almost 80 years! Galo’s journey with coffee began 20 years ago working with his mother on the farm.
Galo’s background as an expert cupper has helped him hone in on his processing. He is a fan of clean processes that express the terroir - we are very much aligned on that. Coffee cherries are washed clean, floated, and manually selected. The coffee is then de-pulped and set to ferment in open tanks for an extended fermentation. After this multi-day process, the coffee is washed and dried in raised beds under shaded canopies.
Ecuador is a super cool coffee origin, with tons of history and an exciting future. The coffees are so delicious, complex, fruity, floral, and immaculately processed. I was blown away by the coffee producers: they are at the forefront of processing innovation, and the results are clearly visible in the cup. The coffees are complex, juicy, clean and keep me wanting more.
- Sebastian
