{"product_id":"guatemala-flor-del-cafe","title":"Guatemala • Flor del Café","description":"\u003ch1\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eThe Coffee\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003c\/h1\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProducer: Oswaldo Pérez\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFarm: Flor del Café\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRegion: Agua Dulce, Cuilco, Huehuetenango\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProcessing: Washed\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVarietal: Mixed\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eElevation: 1,600 masl\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTasting: Lemon, Milk Chocolate, Apricot\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch1\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Producer: Oswaldo Pérez\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h1\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOswaldo Pérez farms Flor del Café in Agua Dulce, in the municipality of Cuilco, high in the Huehuetenango department.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e[CONFIRM WITH ONYX BEFORE PUBLISHING: two conflicting accounts of this farm are circulating in roaster copy, one a smallholder consolidation story and one a larger multi-generation estate. Get the farm size, the planting history and the spelling of his name from the lot documentation.]\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOn the region: Highland Huehue\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHuehuetenango is the highest non-volcanic coffee region in Guatemala, and it exists because of wind.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHot dry air moves up from the Plains of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca and meets cold air falling off the Cuchumatanes range. The collision prevents frost at altitudes where frost would otherwise end the conversation, which is why coffee grows here above 1,800 meters and in places to 2,000. Every other Guatemalan region at that height is volcanic and gets its warmth from the ground. Huehuetenango gets it from Mexico.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnacafé recognizes it as one of eight designated growing regions, labeled Highland Huehue. Harvest runs January through April, a month or more behind the rest of the country.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe other defining regional fact is infrastructure, or the absence of it. In most of Guatemala smallholders sell cherry to a central beneficio and the mill controls processing. Huehuetenango is too remote and too broken up for that to work, so producers wet mill their own coffee on their own farms. Rivers and streams run everywhere here, which makes a small mill possible almost anywhere. It means the person who picked the cherry made every processing decision after it, and it means quality varies farm to farm in a way it doesn't in Antigua.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOn the process\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWashed, done on-farm, which in Huehuetenango means at small scale with equipment sized to one family's crop. Cherry depulped the day it's picked, fermented in tanks somewhere between 12 and 48 hours to break down the remaining mucilage, washed in channels until the parchment squeaks, then dried on patio or raised beds.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGuatemala is 98 percent washed and 86 percent of the crop grades Strictly Hard Bean. The technique isn't exotic. The variable is execution, and on a farm doing its own milling that's entirely the producer's.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWe're still waiting on the fermentation and drying detail for this lot.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eOn the variety: Mixed\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA Huehuetenango smallholder plot is typically some combination of Bourbon, Caturra, Catuaí, Typica and Pache, with Anacafé-14, Parainema and other rust-resistant material increasingly planted alongside. All of it gets harvested and processed together as one lot rather than separated on the patio.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeaf rust is why the mix keeps shifting. The 2011 outbreak took roughly 20 percent of Guatemala's crop and the price collapsed to around $110 per hundredweight, below the cost of producing it. Guatemala declared a national coffee emergency. Growers replanted with whatever resisted rust, and older Bourbon and Typica stands got thinned rather than replaced wholesale, which is how a single plot ends up holding four decades of planting decisions at once.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe milk chocolate in this cup is the older Bourbon and Typica material. The lemon and the apricot are altitude.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe cost of staying\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCoffee income in Huehuetenango has not kept pace, and the response has been migration. Families in the region send members north, and remittances now visibly fund construction in coffee villages. Young people leave because coffee doesn't pay enough to stay for. Paying above market for a separated lot from a farm like this isn't charity; it's the only mechanism that makes staying a rational choice.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch1\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Importer:\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/h1\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eOnyx\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOnyx is Edwin Martinez's green importing operation, run between Bellingham and a cupping lab in Guatemala City. Martinez started with an espresso cart here in 1995 and built the import side around Huehuetenango specifically. His own family farm, Finca Vista Hermosa, sits in Agua Dulce, the same stretch of mountain as Flor del Café.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThat's about as short as a supply chain gets. The importer's farm and the producer's farm are neighbors, and the office is in our city.\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Makeworth Coffee","offers":[{"title":"10oz \/ Whole Bean","offer_id":47227527626924,"sku":"CSB-ONXFDC-10OZ-W","price":24.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0637\/1154\/3468\/files\/Guat_FDC_studio_ce74c9db-49e9-469b-a636-28d792917a30.png?v=1789600197","url":"https:\/\/makeworthcoffee.com\/products\/guatemala-flor-del-cafe","provider":"Makeworth Coffee ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}