Peru Seneja Gesha Inka

What We Love 

Following years of investigation and exploration into Peruvian coffees, we’ve identified the greater Cusco area as a hub of phenomenal coffees. Abel Candia’s Gesha Ink selection contains one of the most exciting and explosive flavor profiles we’ve ever come across in Peru. Vibrant fruit flavors of zingy pink lemonade, elegant white peach, and indulgent blueberries combine to create a coffee that’s truly remarkable and singular in expression. 

About the Producer

Abel Candia is a young coffee producer from the Acconcharcas comité of the Incahuasi Cooperative in Andahuaylas, Peru. Just five years into his coffee journey, Abel has chosen to oversee every step of production on his farm, ensuring meticulous quality control. He exclusively cultivates the Gesha Ink variety, showcasing his dedication to excellence. The result is a coffee bursting with outrageously complex, layered fruit tones, a true reflection of the variety’s potential.

Abel’s farm is nestled in the diverse landscape surrounding the snow-capped Choqesafra valley. His farm, known as Seneja in the Quechua language, carries multiple meanings—salt water, eye of the water, and swamp—each describing the lush environment that supports his coffee plants. The area is rich in biodiversity, and home to monkeys, parrots, and the elusive speckled bear. A river, fed directly from the Choqesafra mountain, provides essential water for the coffee and the surrounding wildlife.

Abel is part of Incahuasi, a cooperative founded in 2005 that has played a key role in elevating Peruvian coffee. Incahuasi is structured into 13 comité, each functioning as a local hub offering agricultural and financial support to its members. Depending on the comité, farmers either process their coffee on-farm—allowing for hands-on quality control and the potential for higher earnings—or deliver their coffee cherry to centralized processing stations for consistency and efficiency.

During our visit to Incahuasi last fall, we spent time with the San Fernando and Pacaypata comites, where producers warmly welcomed us into their farms. Their commitment to both quality and organic production is evident in every step of the process, reinforcing Incahuasi’s reputation as a powerhouse of Peruvian coffee. 

About the Coffee

The mountainous district of Incahuasi (Inkwasi) sits at the extremes of coffee production—soaring altitudes, a cool, arid climate, and some of the most remote coffee-growing communities in Peru. Getting there is no small feat: a 12-hour drive that winds across multiple mountain passes rising above 3,000 meters. But despite its isolation, Incahuasi is quietly redefining what Peruvian coffee can be, offering exceptional quality and striking flavor complexity.

Many farms here still grow heirloom varieties like Typica, Caturra, and Bourbon. In recent years, however, producers have begun experimenting with new genetics—most notably, a variety farmers refer to as Gesha Inka. When we first visited Cusco several years ago, Gesha was just beginning to appear on a few farms. Since then, more and more producers have adopted it, referring to it colloquially as “Gesha Inka.”

Initially, we tasted flavor and aromatic qualities that closely resembled the Geshas we’ve encountered in other parts of the world, so we called it by that name. However, recent genetic testing told a different story: Rather than Panamanian Gesha, Gesha Inka is more closely related to SL9, a Typica-based variety with Ethiopian heritage. In fact, it turns out this variety is entirely unique—genetically distinct from any other known coffee in cultivation today, making it one of the rarest coffee varieties cultivated anywhere in the world.

Whatever you choose to call it—Gesha Inka, SL9, or something else entirely—this variety is remarkably well-suited to the conditions in Cusco. It yields abundantly, shows resilience against coffee leaf rust, and, like other Gesha-like coffees, offers vivid florality and complex fruit character that place it among the highest-quality coffees we’ll release each year.

Producer Abel Candia exemplifies the potential of Gesha Inka through careful farming and thoughtful processing. His lot undergoes a traditional washed process: hand-picked cherries are sorted for ripeness, then depulped and fermented aerobically for 36 hours. The seeds are washed in pristine water from the Choqesafra mountain and dried on raised beds for up to 15 days. The result is a coffee that reflects both the clarity of the variety and the distinct terroir of Incahuasi: transparent, expressive, and full of life.