LA ESMERALDA, SAN ANTONIO HUISTA, HUEHUETENANGO
ARABICA
WASHED
PACHES, BOURBON, SARCHIMOR
1550 MASL
PROFILE AND PARTNERSHIP
CHOCOLATE, CREAMY, VANILLA
Omni Roast / Medium
This like-for-like replacement for our popular Finca Buena Vista coffee is also grown in the hills around San Antonio Huista, in the remote Huehuetenango region of western Guatemala.
We are continuing to work with the same exporter, and due to the similar growing conditions to Buena Vista you can expect a similar tasting coffee: deliciously creamy as an espresso yet delicate and fruity as a filter - an excellent all-rounder with a lingering sweet finish. Thanks to our customers and The Independent voting our Guatemala as one of the best coffees in the UK, we have increased the amount we have bought from this region for the past three years.
We think all of our coffees taste great no matter how you prepare them, but here are our favourite brew methods for this coffee:
ABOUT LA ESMERALDA
Don Crispin Matias lives with his wife Margarita and their six children. He explains that he came up with the name of his farm ‘The Emerald’ because he noticed that he had these beautiful gems on his farm. Crispin grew up in the country side and has always loved agriculture. However, before having his own farm, he used to have a grocery shop. At a certain moment he realized that his heart was with producing crops and decided to sell the shop and buy some land to start his coffee farm. Nowadays he feels proud on his work and achievements in the farm. He is also an active member of the ASIAST, a coffee producer association in his town. Crispin’s coffee consists of all ripe harvested cherries that are depulped on the very same day of picking. The coffee is then fermented for two days and washed in the early morning. The beans are soaked in clean, cold water (with constant circulation of fresh water). After soaking, the coffee is then sun dried for five days on patios.
Photo: Facebook
HISTORY OF COFFEE IN GUATEMALA
While coffee came to Guatemala in the late 18th century, as with much of the Central and South American colonies, cultivation of the crop began to gain steam in the 1860s, with the arrival of European immigrants who were encouraged by the Guatemalan government to establish plantations. Seeds and young coffee plants were distributed as encouragement, as the country’s main export crop (indigo) had recently failed, leaving the population somewhat desperate to find an agricultural replacement. By the late 1800s, Guatemala was exporting more nearly 300 million pounds of coffee annually. Until 2011, it was among the five largest coffee-producing countries in the world, though in recent years it has been outperformed by Honduras.
A large percentage of Guatemala’s population, and therefore also the coffee sector, identifies with one of more than 20 officially recognized indigenous groups, and most of the farmers are smallholders who are either working independently of one another, loosely associated by proximity and cultural ties, or formally affiliated in cooperative associations.
In 1960, coffee growers developed their own union, which has since become the national coffee institute Anacafé (Asosiación Nacional del Café), which is a research center, marketing agent, and financial organization that provides loans and offers support to growers throughout the various regions.
Starting in 2012 and lasting for several years, an outbreak of coffee-leaf rust proved a tremendous obstacle for coffee production in the country, reducing yields by as much as 25%, and causing the government to declare a state of emergency. Farmers attempted a combination of chemical and organic treatments, intensely targeted pruning, reduction of shade plants, and replacing susceptible varieties like Bourbon, Caturra, and Catuai with more leaf-rust-resistant ones. Anacafé, has been working closely with World Coffee Research on variety trials and research that will hopefully result in future protection and prevention of similar outbreaks, as well as provide more productive harvests for the smallholder farmers.