Farm: Elias Pérez Méndez, La Montaña
Notes: Plum, Chocolate, Red Fruits
Processing: Washed
Region: Huehuetenango, Guatemala
About
Our first single origin from Guatemala in a few years! Not because we didn't have the desire to but more-so because we didn't have the right connections. Fortunately we have met some really helpful people that we are working with there. Through their help we found this coffee from a farm called La Montana in the legendary Huehue region.
This coffee has a dark fruit weight underneath that most washed coffees don't carry. We taste red fruits like plum, and apple, along with a nice chocolate base. This coffee is very sessionable and brews very forgiving!
More About The Coffee
This lot comes to us through Primavera, who we started buying Guatemalan coffee from this season. Their coffee is the backbone of our Equinox espresso. Primavera was started in 2013 by Nadine Rasch, and they've spent the years since building real relationships with small-scale producers in Huehuetenango and Fraijanes, running an agronomy program that works with farmers directly in the field and putting a lot of energy into the next generation of growers in Huehue.
Sugar Plum is a single-farm lot from Elias Pérez Méndez and his farm, La Montaña. A lot that small would normally disappear into a regional blend, and a big part of what Primavera does is keep coffees like Elias's separate so they can be tasted, and paid for, on their own merit.
Huehuetenango is one of only three non-volcanic coffee regions in Guatemala and the highest land under cultivation in the country, with coffee growing up to 2,000 meters. At that altitude it should freeze. It doesn't, because hot, dry air sweeps up off the Plains of Tehuantepec in Mexico and runs into the cold air coming down off the Cuchumatanes mountains, and that collision keeps frost out of valleys that would otherwise be too cold for coffee. The region was remote enough for long enough that there was never much central milling, so families process their own coffee right on the farm. That's why the results vary so much farm to farm, which is the fun of buying there, and also the risk.
This year made it harder than usual. Guatemala saw its coldest temperatures in sixteen years during the harvest, cherries took longer to ripen, and picking ran late across the country. Slow ripening costs volume, but it tends to pay you back in sweetness, and you can taste it in this cup.
