Marco Cabrera
📍 Taipiplaya, Province of Caranavi, Department of La Paz, Bolivia
What surprised us: If it was up to Marco, we wouldn't name him as the producer here, but rather his 10-year-old daughter Genesis. Marco is a family person and loves to spend as much time as possible together with his wife and his 3 children.
Genesis herself is already fully into coffee. "The doctor said she can't have too much caffeine yet, of course," explains Marco. "But I've asked a Q-grader friend of mine to teach her the basics of cupping."
Our story with Marco: We have been working with Marco's coffee in the third year now. He usually processes Catuaí, Java and Pacamara for us. He mixes the Java and Pacamara variety in order to get a bit more outcome and we must say: it is the perfect blend!
We get the same coffees each year: honey and natural pulped.
In 2025 we started working closer with his wife Michi. Michi had started studying again after working many years in an NGO. After her studies in finance and controlling she is now responsible for all things numbers and figures at Finca Genesis!
Processing: Marco has experimented a lot with anaerobic fermentations until getting his coffee to the perfect point, the sweet spot. It depends much on the weather, but usually Marco's fermentations take more than 48 hours until he is satisfied with the outcome.
Biography:
Marco grew up as a child of coffee growing parents and decided to study agronomy. Many years he had an office job in La Paz and was actually not thinking of going back to growing coffee. But seeing the development and the impact that coffee has had in his country since 2019, the growing demand for Bolivian specialty coffee, and the growth of the industry in Bolivia itself - roasteries, specialty coffee shops, barista workshops - he decided to go back to the roots.
First, he started working at Asocafé, gave workshops for coffee producers and controlled the quality and fermentation processes at the washing station.
Parallely, he started growing his own coffee plants.
He now owns 4.5 hectares on which he grows Pacamara, Geisha, Catuaí and Java.
2023 was Marco's first harvest year and he has already had his first successes: "I took part in national competitions with my 72hs fermented Catuaí. We won second place in "Best of Bolivia" (a national coffee competition supported by the governments of Switzerland and Sweden, among others). It's almost crazy that Marco can achieve such success in the first year of his harvest. "It only drives me on even more."
Dreams and Motivation:
The competitions and his family drive him on - that's why it wasn't actually Marco who won the competition, but Genesis. "I'm not good at marketing, I don't like to put myself in the spotlight, so even though I cultivated the coffee, I wanted her to represent it", says Marco. "But she had school that day."
That's why he sent another woman to the award ceremony without further ado: his mother.
His big dream is to go to Colombia one day and learn more about fermentations from somebody there. And to be able to finance his children a good formation in the coffee area.
Contact Us
info@caraya-coffee.com
+49160 985 386 15
Lienemannstr. 23, 13403 Berlin