About Chacra D’Dago
Dagoberto Marin is a trailblazer in Peru for the way he has grown coffee over the last 20 years. Following in the footsteps of his father growing coffee, he decided to divert from the conventional approach to growing coffee (heavy use of fertiliser, monocrop farm) to a biodynamic approach (purely fertiliser from the farm and a diverse range of crops). The Marin family have around 15 hectares with different plots growing different coffee.

The story of Chacra D’Dago and their biodynamic creations
In 2005 the company ‘La Chacra D Dago’ was founded.

In Peru, La Chacra means a small plantation, it can be coffee or other crops, however, La Chacra has another meaning that is oriented to the energy fields spoken of and known more in Eastern cultures.

La Chacra D Dago is a 3rd generation company in coffee production, however there are also 3 generations with 3 different farming methods which help explain the development into biodynamic farming.

1st generation in 1950s used conventional agriculture where more focus was on production than quality, with chemical methods.
2nd generation in 1990s went with organic agriculture, using 100% organic methods, caring for the flora and fauna of the forest and coffee crops.
3rd generation started in 2005 with biodynamic agriculture using the practices of Dr. Rudolf Steiner. Going further than organic practices, now they use the astronomical calendar for fertilisation and compost.
What was the fermentation process?
The Marin family are specialists when it comes to the fermentation process. Hector Marin, the eldest son is responsible for the coffee processings, quality control and experimenting with new processes.

First the harvest is all selective and done by hand with no machinery used at all. This helps to screen the quality once it gets to the beneficio (processing plant) which has many steps to screen the cherries to make sure only the ripest, clean, free of defect cherries make it through to the drying stage.

At the top of their beneficio they have a dry area where they check by eye what cherries are ripe and red. All of those that don’t qualify this manual eye test are taken out and placed in an area for seconds. For those cherries left, water is passed through them and this is the second part of quality control. They look for those cherries that float and also discard them into the area of seconds.

After this 2 step process, the coffee cherries that are ready to be dried have the highest potential of giving a full flavour and are then ready to be washed, pulped and stored in a concrete tank for 76 hours, followed by being dried on African beds for 10 – 15 days.