**NEW** VENEZUELA Alfredo Rojas

This coffee is our first from Venezuela. The producer, Alfredo Rojas, owns several coffee farms in Junin, near Rubio. Besides producing coffee, he is also a lawyer and runs and operates a cafe and coffee roasting business in Caracas. This coffee is grown on his farm called Berlin, which is a nod to the German roots of this land going back to the 1800s. The 8-hectare farm, with its 45,000 coffee trees shaded by banana and other trees, He prioritizes sustainable practices like intercropping and avoiding chemical herbicides, all while striving to enhance his farm's output and quality. 

This coffee was intentionally processed utilizing anaerobic fermentation. Generally, this is done by placing freshly-harvested cherries inside a sealed container or bag of some sort for a period of time, which will create a flavor impact. It is technically not fully anaerobic, but limited oxygen exposure. The cherries are sealed in containers or bags, but typically not evacuated with a vacuum or back flushed with nitrogen. 

Venezuelan coffee is rarely seen in our local cafes, and again this is our first offering from Venezuela after 14 years of roasting. Coffee was introduced in the 1730s, Simón Bolívar led the first rebellion against the Spanish in 1808, declared independence in 1811, and won liberation in 1821. It was at this time that coffee and cocoa overtook tobacco in importance. From that point forward coffee production exploded. By the 1830s, Venezuela had become the third-largest coffee exporter. This all changed when the first barrels of petroleum were exported from Venezuela to the United States in 1917.