Story
This delicious blend of varietals Bourbon, Garnica, and Costa Rica tastes like caramel, mulling spices, blood orange
This relationship is thanks to our import partners Semilla, and Cafe Cooperativo, a producer-owned intermediary between smallholders and exporters in Veracruz. The mission of Cafe Cooperativo has always been to transfer more value directly back to local producers and enhance sustainable community development by strengthening ties with roasters and importers. To this end, beyond facilitating microlot farming infrastructure, Cafe Cooperativo also offers training and education to the between 80-150 farming families they represent.
Through partnerships like these, we’re able to make good on our own commitments to more accurate traceability and gender equality up and down the coffee value chain. Because despite Mexico’s emerging specialty coffee market, over 90% of farmland is still owned by men (who also control household income transfers). Quality, and equality, intertwined.
Zongolica region coffees have appeared on our menu every year since 2022 as the impact opportunity for smallholder farmers selling at higher prices outside of the local market is big, and the sensory character in the region and varietal and growing conditions create potential for exceptional specialty coffee.
These cherries were picked by the group’s producers on their 0.5-1 hectare farms at peak ripeness across several days, and fermented between 12-48 hours before being depulped. Once depulped, the seeds ferment for another 24 hours, and are then washed and laid out on mesh drying beds for up to two weeks.
