Take me to Huehuetenango

Roaster: La Cabra, Denmark
Origin: Guatemala
Region: Huehuetenango
Producer: Francisco Salucio
Altitude: 1750 masl
Process: Washed
Harvest: Jan 2020
Variety: Catuai



Dry Fragrance: caramel, brown sugar, baked cookies

Tasting Notes: This coffee presents with a delicate, lightly syrupy body and flavor notes of fresh caramel, summer peaches and black tea. Aftertaste is light on the palate, sweet and lingering. It is a beautiful balance of sweetness, acidity and florality. As it cools, the caramel sweetness and tea notes persist.

Brewing recommendations:  Best on Origami with a 1:16 ratio.

Roaster notes: Up in the mountains surrounding San Antonio Huista lies Finca Las Peñitas, a 0.9 hectare coffee farm tended to by Francisco Salucio and his family. Here in the Huista micro-region, the landscape is dominated by very small scale family farms, and Las Peñitas is no different. Growing and selling coffee provides the main income for the family, like many others in this remote and agriculturally dependent region. Francisco named the farm Las Peñitas due to the Spanish word peña, meaning rock or boulder. The 0.9 hectares that the family have planted with coffee are surrounded by steep rocky slopes, which mark the edge of their small property. It has been Francisco’s goal for some time to own his own coffee farm; to be able to take control over his own future, and be rewarded for his hard work. For this reason he worked several years as an immigrant worker across the border in Mexico, saving in order to purchase his own plot of land for himself and his family. He then sought out the Primavera program in the Huista area, gaining vital knowledge in order to increase and stabilise his income from coffee. Francisco has taken a particular interest in processing as a means of enhancing quality. During the busy harvest time the whole family needs to pitch in to run the farm, so Francisco works together with his wife Izabela and their two daughters. They use a small hand cranked depulper to remove the cherry from the coffee seed, before a fermentation of around 24 hours. The coffee is then thoroughly washed, before a second soaking of around 5 hours. This second soaking is unusual for the region, but Francisco believes it contributes to the clean and elegant flavours in his coffee. Here we find fresh ripe peach, backed up by a concentrated caramel sweetness, before a finish with the elegance of a fine black tea. Francisco’s dedication is clear here, in one of the finest lots we have purchased from Huehuetenango this year.

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