Guatemala | Huehuetenango, Washed

Guatemala

Huehuetenango

The Primavera Family of small producers 

Guatemala
Region: Huehuetenango
Producer: El Sendero Cooperative Smallholders

Taste notes – apples, yellow raisins, biscuit.

This regional Huehuetenango blend is produced by the El Sendero Cooperative, which works and supports 350 smallholders each season. It reflects a traditional Guatemalan cup, delivering a medium round body with sweet notes in each sip. 

El Sendero cooperative

This coffee is a blend of small farmers in the Huista region of Huehuetenango, Guatemala, who are all members of the El Sendero Cooperative. Formed in 2016, the El Sendero Cooperative provides essential support and information to coffee producers in the Huehuetenango region to improve and sustain agriculture of this origin. The cooperative has grown rapidly and now serves 659 members, 350 of whom are coffee producers. The cooperative has its own coffee warehouse, which helps to process and distribute coffee lots to further traders.

Guatemala

Guatemala is located in Central America, with Mexico to the northwest and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast. Before the arrival of the Spanish, many Mayan cultures thrived in Guatemala, and their culture, food, rituals, and beliefs continue to shape the country today. Modern Guatemala is a mosaic of cosmopolitan urban centres and communities steeped in Mayan tradition and culture – and at its centre is coffee, a crop with roots in the economy and history of the country. Guatemala is colourful, complex, and breathtaking in all its ways. The past of Guatemalan coffee-producing regions used to be rough at times, but the future is full of promise. Estimates indicate that there are about 125,000 

coffee farmers in the country and Guatemala remain the eighth-largest producer of coffee in the world. It is renowned for its exceptional coffee quality, guided in part by its government-backed farmer organization Anacafé.

Huehuetenango

Huehuetenango (often called – Huehue) is in the western part of Guatemala, on the border with Mexico, and trade across the border thrives.

Huehue is very remote, and the roads in the region can be difficult; before flights from the city, reaching farms in this area used to take 8-10 hours of bumpy driving in the high mountains. But the altitude of this region, combined with the hot, dry winds that blow over from Mexico’s Tehuantepec plain, create excellent conditions for quality coffee here. Because of the altitudes and remoteness of the region, most farmers process their coffee at home instead of the central wet mill.

Huehuetenango is known for beans with intense and pleasant acidity, full body and delightful wine, floral and fruity notes.

Traceability

The Primavera Family lot was created by 10–15 small producers. They are constantly improving quality.

Their coffee was purchased to allow them to use the extra income they receive from selling at a higher price to reinvest in their farm and wet mills.               

Hard work is implemented constantly by these producers to help them improve the quality and therefore, the price of their coffees.        

For this lot, coffees of 84 and 85 points were chosen to create a great quality, affordable blend. This regional lot is different from anything else you will see in the market as it has full transparency and traceability to each producer.

Coffee Varieties

Bourbon is one of the most culturally and genetically important C. Arabica varieties in the world, are known for excellent quality in the cup at the highest altitudes. It is also the most famous of the Bourbon-descended varieties and is a tall variety characterized by relatively low production, susceptibility to major diseases, and excellent cup quality.

French missionaries introduced Bourbon from Yemen to Bourbon Island (now La Réunion) – giving it the name it has today – in the early 1700s. Until the mid-19th century, Bourbon did not leave the island. But beginning in the mid-1800s, the variety spread to new parts of the world as the missionaries moved to establish footholds in Africa and the Americas. 

The Bourbon variety was introduced to Brazil around 1860, and from there rapidly spread north into other parts of South and Central America, where it is still cultivated today. 

Today in Latin America, Bourbon has largely been replaced by varieties that descend from it (including Caturra, Catuai, and Mundo Novo), although Bourbon itself is still cultivated in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Peru.

Catuai is a compact plant with high-yielding potential of standard quality in Central America. Very high susceptibility to coffee leaf rust.

It is a cross between highly productive Mundo Novo and compact Caturra, made by the Instituto Agronomico (IAC) of Sao Paulo State in Campinas, Brazil. The plant is highly productive compared to plants of Bourbon, in part because of its small size, which allows plants to be closely spaced; it can be planted at nearly double the density. The shape of the plant makes it relatively easy to apply pest and disease treatments. It is mainly characterized by great vigour and its low height; it is less compact than Caturra. The cultivar was created in 1949 from a crossing of yellow Caturra and Mundo Novo and was initially called H-2077. 

Catuai, whose small stature allows it to be planted densely and harvested more efficiently, led in part to the intensification of full-sun coffee cultivation in Central America in the 1970s and 1980s.

Caturra 

This variety was discovered on a plantation in the Minas Gerais state (Brazil) at the beginning of the 20th century. Caturra is a mutation of the Bourbon variety, and it is known as the first naturally occurring coffee variety mutation ever discovered.

It became popular because of its small-sized crops, high yield, and ability to mature coffee cherries faster than other variety crops after planting. The specifics of this variety meant that farmers could grow more coffee while using less land. Caturra got its name because of its crop size. In the Guarani language, caturra – means small.

In a cup, Caturra reflects a delicate taste profile with bright acidity and a low-to-medium body.