Guatemala: Xinabajul , Washed

About the Producer

This second lot of Gesha is our last for the year, and at twice the volume of our our previous 27 bag lot, it should last more than a single weekend! We've been lucky enough to be the sole buyer of this coffee for several years now. They've continued to plant more coffee each year and what started as a handful of bags annually, has ballooned to more than 100 bags this year (we have more on the way)! If you don't know the story of the Gesha cultivar, it is an old coffee type from Ethiopia that was brought to an experimental coffee garden in Costa Rica years ago as a specimen sample. It was distributed to a few farms for testing on small plots, but not much was thought of it until one of these, Esmeralda in Panama, separated it from the other cultivars and entered it in the national competition. It was so outrageously different, with fruited and floral character like a Yirga Cheffe coffee from half a world away. Now that the word is out, other farms that received some of the seed have tried to separate their Gesha coffee as well, as is the case here. The results are always a bit different: the cultivar "expresses" itself differently in terms of cup flavors at each location, influenced by weather, soil, altitude and the like. And with this coffee from the region of Acatenango, we have a Gesha cup that expresses much of that floral intensity that's become synonymous with the "Gesha" name. Harvest was quite productive this year again as the owner of the farm has dedicated even more of his farm to this varietal, which after putting it to the cup test we've decided is a very good thing. We've been the sole buyer of this coffee and have chosen to keep certain farm specifics to ourselves. The farm sits on the steep slopes of Volcan Acatenango between 1600 - 1700 meters and reaps the benefits of rich volcanic soil. This farm has been in the same family for a couple generations now and they've built out an impressive wet milling facility onsite as well.

-Sweet Maria’s