Guatemala

Guatemalan coffee is special. Maybe it is the tradition of the country’s fabled estates—the earliest date back to the first half of the nineteenth century, and many have been in continuous operation for more than a century. Maybe it is the dizzying diversity of people, places, and flavor profiles. Guatemala, a country of 16 million people, is home to more than 20 indigenous groups and more than half a dozen distinctive growing regions in an area smaller than Pennsylvania. The landscapes of Guatemala’s coffeelands are majestic—the country has more than three dozen volcanoes and the highest elevations anywhere in Central America. The mystique of Guatemalan coffee is the product of some combination of all of these: tradition, diversity, natural resources unmatched anywhere in Central America, and a thoroughly modern commitment to quality.

La Maravilla is a dream of a coffee farm that lives up to its lofty name. Maravilla is Spanish for marvel, and the farm is certainly that, set spectacularly in a remote and rugged stretch of Huehuetenango’s jagged volcanic mountains and stretching vertically over a span of nearly 300 meters to a maximum elevation of almost 6,000 feet above sea level. La Maravilla was the dream Mauricio shared with his father, a dream that started becoming reality in 1997 when they purchased this remarkable lot, at the time accessible only by a narrow horse path. The father-and-son duo started humbly, with just three plants, but they were each focused on a single goal: producing high-quality, progressive coffee for the growing specialty market.

Together, they carved out roads, constructed drying patios, and built their own wet mill. These efforts dramatically improved the farm and helped showcase the coffee with a punchy acidity that the Huehuetenango farm was able to produce. In 2003, a few years after they started, Intelligentsia made our first visit to Finca La Maravilla and began a relationship that continues to get stronger with each passing year.

During that visit, we saw the beginnings of something truly progressive, starting with the vision that drove Mauricio and his father, and the way the land seemed to rise to meet them and the challenge: soaring elevation, a temperate climate, abundant rainfall, rich volcanic soils, steep peaks that provided metronomic regularity to the cycles of sun and shade cast over the coffee fields.

Mauricio lost his father in 2005, but he did not give up their dream. Instead, he marched on with the memory of his father in his heart, earning international recognition as one of the best farms in Guatemala; La Maravilla became a regular fixture in the annual Guatemala Cup of Excellence competitions, producing winning lots in 2011, 2013, 2014, and again in 2016.

A few years ago, Mauricio’s son Luis followed him into the family business. He studied agronomy and now works the farm with his dad, making it a father-and-son venture once again. The duo is no less driven than the last father-son team to work La Maravilla, and they continue to innovate relentlessly to keep the farm in the ranks of Guatemala’s elite.

Finca La Soledad was established in 1895. That year, the first automobile patent was issued in the United States, the Coca-Cola Company turned three, and a fledgling institution of higher learning in Northern California called Stanford University celebrated the tenth anniversary of its founding. Since then, earthquakes have rattled the walls of the farmhouse at La Soledad, revolutions and counterrevolutions have raged through Guatemala’s coffeelands, and countless eruptions of the Acatenango and Fuego volcanoes, in whose shadows it lies, have covered its fields in ash. But well over a century later, the Pérez family is still growing coffee in this peaceful grove in the Acatenango Valley.

Since its founding more than 125 years ago, some things haven’t changed much at La Soledad. There is still no electricity at the farmhouse, where fifth-generation grower Raúl Pérez still rises with the sun in the quiet of the coffee fields. Some of the varieties growing at La Soledad today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, are the same ones that were planted there at the close of the nineteenth.

But make no mistake about it: La Soledad is a thoroughly progressive and modern operation. Its precision agronomy, varietal diversification, exacting regulation of post-harvest processes, relentless quality control, and irrepressible spirit of innovation make it a world-class coffee farm. There is no better testament to the success of these efforts than Finca La Soledad’s staggering seven wins at the prestigious Guatemala Cup of Excellence competition.

In the late 1980s, Rony Asencio was searching for land to start a coffee farm. But he did not gravitate toward the country’s most recognized coffee regions, which spread in a volcanic belt across the waist of the country: Antigua, Acatenango, Chimaltenango, Quetzaltenango, San Marcos, and Huehuetenango. In fact, he wanted nothing to do with them. Instead, he established Santa Ana La Huerta in the Sierra de Las Minas mountain range in eastern Guatemala, a difficult and historically wet region that has some of the largest cloud forests in Central America. Why establish an operation counter to the norm? He wanted to be absolutely sure his farm was safe from the country’s volcanoes, which can give in the form of mineral-rich volcanic soils, but can also take with catastrophic eruptions that are always a distinct possibility in Guatemala.

Safe from volcanoes, Rony has meticulously managed his farm from its inception in the name of quality and sustainability. He has deliberately adopted more environmentally friendly practices at his farm and mill, placing a strong reliance on natural elements and fertilizers. The result is a farm that teems with newfound biodiversity. In addition, Rony has also made huge strides in minimizing water consumption, a pressing topic in the region. He recycles water several times throughout his wet mill processing and treats the water before releasing it back into the local watershed.

Throughout the initial five-year phase of our direct trade relationship with Rony and Santa Ana, we have conducted a methodical and exhaustive survey of the farm, cupping as many as 80 samples a season to map the quality potential of its different sections, while also working with Rony on a series of post-harvest processing pilots. As we push into the next five seasons of our relationship, we will leverage that knowledge and experience together in our shared pursuit of quality improvements.