In 2000, I founded one of the first and few artisanal roasting companies with my husband, which later became part of the Italian specialty coffee scene.
We did not have a family tradition behind us; we came to coffee from working in a bar, and, driven by a lot of enthusiasm and little knowledge, we attempted to explore the botany of the bean and the roasting techniques in a fascinating journey of constant evolution, rich in encounters, discoveries, discussions, and learning.
It was during Terra Madre in 2012 that we met Cesar Marin, just over twenty, invited as a delegate from Peru on one of his first trips outside his homeland.
This led to a great friendship, which still lasts and has brought me to collaborate with the Marin family, visit La Chacra d’Dago, and support their entrepreneurial
and social project, as well as purchase their coffee, which has improved over the years, also thanks to the care and constant presence in the field of Hector, Cesar's brother, and the supervision of Dagoberto, father of Cesar, Hector, and Eduardo, and a pioneer of Biodynamics in Latin America.
The Marin family has been cultivating coffee for three generations in Villarica, in the province of Oxapampa, Pasco region, on the eastern slope of the Western Cordillera, a day's drive from Lima.
Cesar's grandfather grew conventional coffee in the 1950s, practicing massive agriculture and monoculture, like everyone else at that time.
In the 1990s, Dagoberto, Cesar's father, Hector, and Eduardo, a second-generation farmer, began following in his father's footsteps, but soon realized that the use of fertilizers and pesticides would contribute to accelerating environmental disaster, just like monoculture and reckless exploitation of the soil.
As an agronomist sensitive to environmental issues and aware of the need for education in respecting nature, he soon converted the inherited farm to organic farming, founding La Chacra d'Dago, definitively breaking with traditional conventional techniques and involving his children and collaborators in a mindset shift that would allow for this transformation.
In 2005, Dagoberto approached the anthroposophical spiritual vision of philosopher Rudolf Steiner, undertaking the third shift, which led him, beyond organic practices, to embrace biodynamic agriculture.
Three generations: three emblematic paths of three different eras, three awarenesses, three urgencies, three responses straddling the 20th and 21st centuries.
At the Chacra d’Dago, the health of the soil, living beings, the balance and harmony between agriculture and the ecosystem are the foundations of a lifestyle that goes beyond agricultural practices.
The cultivation of coffee is part of a universe and a circularity that highlights the nourishment of the soil, the protection of the great biodiversity that sees Peru among the top ten countries in the world for the richness of protected areas, variety of fauna and flora.
At Chacra d’Dago, coffee grows in the shade of tall trees to ensure a slow maturation of the cherries; fruit plants of different varieties, legumes, flowers, and vegetables, beekeeping, and raising poultry, along with a conscious use of the nearby water source, create a connection that regenerates the soil and enriches the quality and complexity of the coffee.
At Chacra d’Dago, great importance is given to the internal production of compost, which is constantly monitored and returned to the soil.
The Marin family is committed to educating about respect for the environment.
hosting roasters, baristas, and farmers with whom there is an exchange of information and opinions. The search for harmony that does not exclude any living being is the daily philosophy of the Marin family, and their hospitality is part of this quest for harmony.
I was a guest at Chacra d’Dago in 2022, during the harvest, to select and process the first batch of the Slow Food Coffee Coalition, which, together with Cesar, we presented at Terra Madre.
The selected variety, a Yellow Catuai, was harvested at the foot of the mountains surrounding the farm; the coffee plants come to surround the house – a hexagonal wooden stilt house where Hector, his wife, and their children live, and it was built with materials that blend it into the surrounding environment. We carefully selected only the ripe cherries, then fermented in tanks with native yeasts, controlling the temperature and fermentation times, and then drying them to obtain an intense cup rich in aroma and sweetness.
With Hector and Eduardo, I visited the plantation divided into plots, where coffee plants grow in the forest, until we reach the spring that provides water to La Chacra d’Dago and the surrounding villages.
Walking in the forest, amidst the calls of the birds and the scent of the flowers is invigorating!
It was a very intense emotional experience that radically changed my idea of specialty coffee, of coffee quality, inseparable from respect for the environment and a holistic approach that fosters complexity and contamination between the animal and plant worlds.
In the afternoons spent with Dagoberto and his wife Nelly, in the beautiful garden that collects a part of the many varieties of orchids present in Peru, in the shade of fruit trees unknown to me,
I listened to their story, which began 40 years ago, among the university classrooms, in a Latin America in turmoil and seeking an identity and economic independence not yet achieved, amid sometimes bloody battles, the student revolution, and the hope for an emancipation from poverty that still delays arrival for all.
Then, the choice to leave Lima to return to the house where Dagoberto grew up, and amid the thousand difficulties, to give life to their agricultural project, to raise their three children in nature.
The Chacra d'Dago is a reference for all farmers in Latin America who want to embark on the practices of biodynamic agriculture. Cesar, Hector, and Eduardo, each with different roles, continue the path started by their father and mother, along with a team of young collaborators, not only in coffee production but also in educating about environmental respect. They combine their commitment to the Biodynamic movement with that of the Slow Food Coffee Coalition, sharing a common vision and perspective that places coffee cultivation within a context of circular and regenerative agriculture.
