Once a day laborer and then vegetable farmer, Carlos began saving money which he used to buy multiple plots of land suitable for coffee production. Among his farms is a 2.3 hectare plot called Bella Vista close to the town of El Cedral.
At first Carlos grew coffee destined for the commercial market, which he would process and deliver to Beneficio San Vicente (where we source components for some of our mainstay coffees). At the advice of Benjamín Paz, our friend and point of contact at San Vicente, Carlos soon began processing coffee for the specialty sector. With good location, high elevations, and quality varieties under cultivation, Carlos's farms demonstrated every potential for excellent coffee.
With 1,700 meters of elevation—quite high for its latitude—Bella Vista is planted with bourbon and pacas varieties as well as a small number of peach and avocado trees. This lot in particular is a selection of 100% pacas, a mutation of bourbon specific to Central America and known for its high quality. Like caturra and villa sarchi—other bourbon relatives—it carries a single-gene mutation that shortens its stature. Its compact nature leads to higher potential yields while allowing plants to be placed close together.
To process fully washed coffees, Carlos depulps his coffee every afternoon during harvest and ferments each lot—in tanks, without water—for 18 hours. The parchment coffee is rinsed seven times to remove any remaining mucilage and sun-dried in parabolic dryers for 15-20 days. While drying, the parchment is hand-sorted to remove every visible defect.
According to Carlos, his biggest challenges are the high cost of agricultural inputs and the scarcity of labor during the harvest, echoing what we've heard from producers in many coffee growing regions. Soon Carlos plans to invest in a storage facility as well as a moisture meter to more precisely monitor his coffee during drying.
Though Santa Bárbara is one of our core origins in terms of total volume, this is the first single origin offering from the region in recent memory. We're grateful to Benjamín Paz and the team at Beneficio San Vicente for their incredible work in Honduras and for sourcing this lovely coffee.
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