The Variety

Huehuetenango

Pronounced way-way-teh-nan-go and often simply called Huehue, this remote, mountainous area is home to famed high-altitude coffee towns, celebrated for their complex, fruit-forward coffees. Nestled in valleys and clinging to mountains that rise from the winding roads leading to Mexico’s southern border, farms sit as high as 2,000 meters above sea level. The steep terrain makes harvesting, processing, and transporting coffee a challenging task, one that is made more difficult by an acute labor shortage. Still, thousands of smallholder farmers who rely on coffee for their livelihoods persist, often as part of coffee cooperative organizations that, in addition to buying and selling coffee, provide vital community services, such as access to credit and training on best agricultural practices.

Coopesqui

Coopesqui, a smallholder cooperative established in 1964 in La Libertad, Huehuetenango, has grown from providing small loans to becoming a full-fledged specialty coffee company. In recent years, the cooperative has invested in quality improvements and developed a program to separate and build carefully selected single-farm and community lots. Prioritizing quality over quantity, we are one of only a handful of roasters in the world that partner with the coop. Coopesqui also roasts and sells coffee locally, generating additional income for both individual members and the cooperative while promoting local appreciation for the high quality of the region's coffee.

We first purchased a small single-farm lot from Coopesqui in 2020, after meeting at ECWx Guatemala. Since then, we have sourced coffee from them annually, growing our volumes each year as the coffee continues to improve. Our regular visits to the cooperative, led by Sam Sabori, have deepened our relationship and built mutual trust, enabling us to cup and select the best lots, which we use in our blends and feature on our single-origin menu. In March 2024, we traveled to La Libertad to select this year's lots in person at Coopesqui's quality control lab, which is operated by a well-calibrated and dedicated team.

Francisco Martinez

This single-farm lot comes from El Regalo, the farm of cooperative member Francisco Martínez. It features a blend of traditional, high-quality Latin American cultivars: Bourbon, Catuai, Caturra, Pache, and San Ramón. It is one of several single-origin lots we sourced from the cooperative this season, and this marks the second year we are offering Don Francisco's coffee.

This photo was taken during a brief pause as we tried to keep up with Don Francisco, machete in hand, ready to clear any stray weed he encountered on our path.

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Grape | Orange | Violet

This Coffee is Direct Trade and in Season.

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