At the foot of the volcano
At the foot of Volcán de Agua, just outside the city of Antigua, the Zelaya family dries coffee every day. When I arrived at their processing facility, I was taken up to the balcony. While sipping on a cup of coffee, I watched the workers raking the drying beans across the patio below, with the volcano looming behind them. I couldn't have asked for a better start to the day!
The tour that followed took me through the wet and dry processing stages step by step. I'll save the details for a separate post, but one thing I want to highlight: the quality control carried out here is impressive.
At every point of the process, beans that don't make the cut are set aside. If they're too light, too small, too irregular, they get taken out and processed separately to the main harvest. Nothing slips through! That precision, applied with the consistency done here, is something that helps deliver the exceptional cup that Finca La Candelaria is known for.
After the tour came a blind cupping with the team. Twenty-four cups, none of them labelled. My favourite? La Candelaria, as it should be! But there was also another single finca coffee I hadn't come across before that caught me off guard. We'll share more about this soon!
Among the selection were a few blends, and the difference was immediately apparent. It confirmed once again what we already knew: single finca coffee from a well-run farm delivers a complexity that blends are rarely able to match.
Good news by the way: the team at La Candelaria has recently tightened a number of processes, resulting in higher cupping scores. The new harvest coming up is one to look forward to.
After lunch we drove to the finca itself. Volcán de Fuego, which rises right alongside the land, sadly retreated behind clouds that afternoon. I couldn't see it, but its presence was certainly still felt. You feel how the landscape here influences everything.
The harvest was winding down. The trees were mostly bare, pickers working through the final round of coffee picking. Not a single cherry can be left behind, since fallen fruit attracts pests.
During the drive around the farm I also got a look at the agricultural techniques that Luis Pedro has introduced, drawing on his agronomy training. We'll go into more detail on that later, because it deserves a story of its own.
Luis Pedro himself was in the USA while I was visiting his farm. But his absence was barely noticeable, because his presence is still felt everywhere. The people who work there talk about him with such pride and warmth that is impossible to fake. Someone who has that kind of loyalty from his people is clearly doing more than just growing good coffee.
At the end of the day I returned to the balcony where I had began the day. The drying patios lay in the late afternoon light, workers quietly gathering the beans. Every morning the beans are spread out under the open sky, and every evening they are brought back in. A ritual that repeats itself here every single day.
Volcán de Agua looked on, as it has done for four generations.
