Guatemala 2012

Guatemala 2012 -

Finca Valparaiso

Guatemala is known for being one of the World's most quality-minded coffee-producing countries. Therefore every year it is a pleasure for Estate Coffee to return.
Purity of the cup here is paramount, therefore they have done extensive steps to avoid defective tastes / impurities and such. F.ex. insect damaged beans, over- or underripe cherries are sorted out.
Selective harvesting by hand as well as world class grading practices is what Guatemala is known for, but this year things were interesting. There were rumors of a much different harvest cycle, with rainfall in the most unimaginable times and droughts in what used to be rainseason. Because of this, many plant diseases occurred, F.ex. “Roja”, The Rust and “Ojo De Gallo”( The Eye of the Rooster). Which made the Guatemalan production go down by approx. 30% this year they say.
At the conventional export mill SuBeneficio in Guatemala City I tasted my way through three rounds of coffees, from some of the best and most respected farms in the country.
It was a blind tasting, but one coffee I noticed. Again this year it was Valparaiso, our longterm partner, stood out from the crowd with most fruitiness and more significant microclimate taste (Terroir). Valparaiso is a classic Guatemalan coffee produced after classical Guatemalan Specialty standards. With great power in the cup, tones of light berries, in the direction of perfectly ripe green grapes and gooseberry, chocolate sweetness, with a high but very pleasant acidity. It represents its region (Acatenango) incredibly.
I met with Ernesto Perez (Finca Valparaiso Agronomist) and went out to see the fields and the diseases which had affected some parts of the plantations. Fortunately only a few areas were severely hit. Ernesto believes global warming is a major challenge for farmers in the country. He says that farmers who are aware and take care of their fields, detect diseases in time and can respond promptly and avoid disease much better. Large farms are hit the hardest because they are not in the field as much and just expects to able to fix everything with chemicals. Ernesto can´t take this relentless behaviour, because it only damages the soil and the plants even more. Across from Valparaiso, he showed us a horrid example of a farm which almost looked like a graveyard for coffee trees, after years of chemicals and poor grooming.
Finca Valparaiso try to use as few chemicals as possible and less harmful fertilizers and pesticides are thankfully also being developed.
We are delighted to continue working with Ernesto and his family. It is the seventh harvest in a row we buy from them and the new harvest will be available approx. in June.

Finca Santa Felisa / San Antonio Visit

Together with Antonio Meneses (Santa Felisa), I also visited the organic coffee Laboratory where Finca Santa Felisa gets their coffees grated at. We tasted some exciting microlots (Special selected lots of coffee, f.ex. chosen because of special Arabica variety or specific post-harvest treatment). Antonio also told us about the plant diseases that particularly hit the Bourbon(Arabica variety) hard. This we would see later on our visit to Santa Felisa.
We tasted Santa Felisas mircolots from the San Antonio field, a clean Typica variety, this variety had not been hit as hard, and it tasted great also with good sweet dark chocolate tones and clear floral honey notes with a mild tangerine-like acid. Additionally, they had tried a Kenya fermentation of the same coffee. Very exciting result, extremely balanced and even more fruity than the normal San Antonio. In addition, we tasted their newest addition, the Geisha, the Ethiopian variety. This Geisha variety was further developed in Costa Rica where Felisa had their seeds from. Geisha is known for its floral aromas and the aromas were in full bloom, Jasmine, Citrus, Bergamot wrapped in an apricot-like sweetness!

Later we went and visited Felisa farm managed by Antonios sister Anabella who is also an Agronomist. Just like Valparaiso, Felisa is also located in the Acatenango valley. It is a great area with volcanic and very fertile soil and not far from the active volcano El Fuego (which also roared a few times during the dayJ).
We saw their plantations and met pickers in the field doing their nearly 5th month of picking(Very unusual, usually it is three months). The harvest as mentioned, has been quite different than previous years.
Anabella spoke about the importance of being flexible and taking care of the Biodiversity on Organic farms. Organic farms do not have the same possiblity to increase the amount of chemicals when there is a plant disease, therefore, they must ensure that they keep themselves updated on organic/sustainable ways of dealing with these problems. To have different varieties is also key, in order to ensure the harvest and also the Biodiversity in general, since plant disease rarely affects several varieties simultaneously.
With approx. 6 varieties right now You have to say that they have come far, since this is almost twice as many as normal farms, some only have two varieties. We saw their Bourbon fields, or what was left of them, this variety Anabella told, was extremely fragile against diseases in their particular area and they would replace them with other species.
In their experimental fields we also saw up to 12 other varieties, they also want to experiment with. Geisha is one of them and it has great promise, it keeps well, it does not produce many cherries, but it seems to be stabile and with high quality. Felisa´s social environment is also great, some places You´ve heard about the Mayans being treated poorly, but here they thrive as excellent farmers, millers, cutters etc. helping out the Meneses family. Around ten families run the daily management of the farm and live at Santa Felisa and all are part of the incredibly high Quality they have every year. It was incredibly meaningful to visit them and nice to see how Organic- and innovative thinking thrives here.

We look forward again this year to present one of the world's best Organic coffees in our opinion. Santa Felisa & San Antonio Microlot. The new harvest will be available on the shelves approx. in June.