Finca Santa Paula

This coffee is available to customers outside the UK only

This coffee is packed in jute sacks lined with PVC Grainpro bags – an airtight storage system that preserves aroma and freshness for longer, while also allowing the coffee to breathe naturally.

Finca Santa Paula is located at around 1,375m near the small town of San Pedro Carcha, in the Alto Verapaz region in north-central Guatemala. The area is known locally as Tezulutlán, and is still populated by indigenous peoples who live and work the land using traditional methods.

Finca Santa Paula was founded in the early 1990s and since then the farm’s manager, Don Adalberto Reyes, and its owners have worked on developing a virtually 100% sustainable farm. Don Adalberto speaks four languages: Spanish, Kekchis, Pocoman and Achi. In this region of Guatemala, it is vital to be able to speak at least one other language besides Spanish as all the local indigenous communities communicate in their own local languages.

Santa Paula’s coffee is a mix of Caturra (80%), Catuaí (18%) and Catimor (2%) varietals, which grow in the shade of native Inga and Pepeto trees. The high rainfall in the region (3,000-4,000 ml a year) ensures a long and steady maturation of the coffee cherries, allowing the coffee to develop a unique fruitiness and spicy note in the cup. The farm produces around 750 bags of coffee a year.

The water that the farm uses for its wet mill comes from purpose built lagoons, which capture rain water. The washed coffee is then dried in greenhouses. The organic waste from the pulped coffee is recycled using lombriculture, whereby earth worms transform the organic waste into compost that is then returned to the farm as fertilizer.

Cupping Date: 

2 November 2011

Cup: 

Clean

Sweetness: 

Sugar Cane

Acidity: 

Crisp Elegant Lively

Mouthfeel: 

Juicy

Flavour: 

Gooseberry Berries Plum Apricot Tropical Fruit

Aftertaste: 

Long finish

Balance/Overall: 

Well balanced

Overall: 

A great, complex coffee whose cane sugar sweetness is balanced with a lively, crisp and elegant acidity; notes of plum, gooseberry, berries and apricot, as well as some tropical notes.