Finca Perla Azul

FLAVOR PROFILE  Almond, chocolate, lime soda

VARIETY Parainema, Ihcafe 90

PROCESS Washed

ELEVATION 1350 masl

IMPORTER Relationship Coffee/ Royal NY

Some coffees arrive through long relationships and introductions; others begin at a table full of cups, with loose conversations in a lab and the sudden realization that you’ve just met someone who genuinely loves what they do. This is one of those.

We first met Grasia Peñalba in the cupping lab at COMSA, where she was working as a cupper. I spent a lot of time in Marcala in that room, tasting through table after table, and Grasia was one of the people guiding the process. Later, I ended up in a car with her family for four hours, winding through the mountains toward the airport, trading music and trying to keep up with my terrible Spanish. That fast, chaotic drive, full of warmth and laughter, made it feel natural and obvious that we’d be working with her.

Grasia essentially grew up at COMSA. Her father, Rodolfo Peñalba, is the general manager and one of the cooperative’s founders, and her mother, Miriam “Betty” Perez, is a third‑generation farmer and community leader. Even with that history behind her, Grasia has carved out her own lane. She manages a parcel on the family farm, Finca Perla Azul, farming it with the organic and biodynamic principles COMSA is known for, but with a level of precision that is distinctly hers.

She selectively picks cherries based on brix readings and even moon phases, not as a gimmick but as part of the way she pays close attention to the plants. Cherries are hand sorted, floated, and macerated for 24 hours in sealed bags. After depulping, the coffee is washed and moved to raised beds, where it dries slowly over roughly two weeks.

Once dried, the coffee moves to COMSA’s dry mill, where it is cupped, hulled, and sorted by density and color. A team of Q graders checks quality before export, and the cooperative’s systems keep traceability tight from farm to shipment.

It felt right to begin a relationship with this coffee because it is tasty, honest, and shaped by someone who is quietly helping define COMSA’s future.