PRESENT SIMPLE | ESPRESSO BLEND

GUATEMALA - Sombra del Volcan from smallholder producers in Antigua and surrounding communities.

The many volcanoes and valleys surrounding our beautiful city of Antigua provide excellent growing conditions for coffee. Ideal altitudes, temperate climates, and rich volcanic soils create sweet profiles with crisp citric acidity, a creamy body, lots of deep chocolate, and a zippy clean finish. This Antigua profile lot comes from smallholder farms in Antigua, the Acatenango Valley to the west, and San Martin Jilotepeque to the north.

Producers cultivate their coffees under shade, between 1500-1600 average meters above sea level. Varieties include Bourbon, Caturra, and Catuaí. Some contributing farms include Finca La Bendición, Finca La Esperanza, and Finca San Antonio.

San Antonio, the central wet mill at the foot of Volcan de Agua, receives cherry from these farms from December through April, processing, sorting, and drying parchment on covered raised beds.

• Regions: Antigua, San Martin Jilotepeque, Acatenango

• Feature Farms / Producers: La Bendición, La Esperanza, San Antonio

• Altitudes: 1500-1600 masl

• Varieties: Bourbon, Caturra, Catuaí

• Processing: Fully washed, patio dried.

ETHIOPIA - a rare “single producer” natural from Tewabech Tilo in Yirgacheffe.

Tewabech Tilo grows coffee on 6.5 hectares of land in Yirga Chefe (also spelled Yirgacheffe), one of 8 woredas, or districts, that comprise the dense and competitive highland zone of Gedeo. The entire Gedeo zone is called “Yirgacheffe” after this district. By far, it is most famous for its long history of recognizable terroir.

6.5 hectares is considered very large for this area, where half a hectare is the norm. Ethiopia's vast majority of coffee processing is centralized due to a lack of infrastructure or efficiencies at the farm level. Still, larger plots like Tewabech’s allow for greater personal control. This lot is Tewabech’s entire specialty crop, harvested with the assistance of about seven workers, sorted for consistency, and sundried on her property on raised beds for about three weeks.  There are precious few single-farm coffees available in this part of Ethiopia. Not long ago, there were practically none at all. For the past ten years, Royal Coffee, with support from select cooperatives, led the formation of the Single Farmer Lots Program to break off single farmer lots from the more giant cooperative blends sold anonymously through the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX), taking custody of these precious coffees through a direct sale. The program was a unique micro-channel of almost unprecedented specificity in coffee supply from Ethiopia during those first years. Royal supported farmers with the drive and means to sell directly. In turn, our most enthusiastic buyers of Ethiopia coffee had access to a portfolio of single-farm lots, un-diluted by the typical cooperative- and exporter-level consolidations. The Single Farmer Lots Program represented a delightful end to a chaotic chapter in Ethiopia’s coffee history. We think it was a foundational model for what is happening now: the emergence of a new generation of micro-exporters engaged in start-up relationship farming in Ethiopia’s world-famous southern zones, putting more diversity and traceability into the global market than ever before.

Tewabech Tilo started processing and marketing her coffee in 2019. After losing her husband 27 years ago, she raised her six children alone—all of whom are now college-educated and work to help support her and her farm. Tewabech’s coffee is managed and exported by Konga Trading PLC, a recently-formed company owned by, who else, the former General Manager of the Yirgacheffe Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (YCFCU), Takele Mammo. Takele was an instrumental partner of Royal’s during his time at YCFCU, helping us identify and successfully export single farmer lots for the first time in the Union’s long history.

• Region: Yirgacheffe Woreda

• Producer / Farm: Tewabech Tilo

• Altitudes: 1900-2200 masl

• Varieties: Local heirloom cultivar 74158

• Processing: Full natural and dried on raised beds.

BRAZIL - natural from Sítio Boa Vista & Sítio Joaninha in Cerra do Cigano, Caconde.

FAF Coffees is a specialty exporter in Brazil founded by the Croce family. During their years spent struggling to revive the soils of their family farm in the Mogiana region, the Croces connected with like-minded growers working as well to make farming viable for the next generation, with a strong focus on their immediate ecosystems—the watersheds and canopies that made the land worth living on—as well as quality, as means to economic independence and self-esteem. Over the years, the Croce’s network of farmers grew. FAF now exports coffee on behalf of 150 small and sustainable farms throughout the Mogiana region, and increasingly, other pockets of small entrepreneurial growers dedicated to the same combination of cup quality, environmental health, and community strength, exuberantly referred to in the FAF network as “total quality”.  

This particular lot is a micro-blend of 2 farms located in the Cerra do Cigano community, or “Gypsy Hill”, in the municipality of Caconde, a rolling, mountainous area with steep slopes and abundant natural springs populated mostly by legacy family homesteads. Sítio Boa Vista is one of the first farms to join the Croce family in their mission to transform their land when very few global buyers expected specialty coffee from Brazil. The farm is 17 hectares and entirely hand-harvested. It is managed by Gertrudes, her husband Celso, and their son Denner and includes extended family members to manage the harvest. The second farm, Sítio Joaninha, is run by Valdir José Ferreira, whose grandparents first moved to Caconde 35 years ago. After spending holidays on the farm and learning the lifestyle, he moved to the region. He established Joaninha, a 7-hectare estate now home to Valdir, his wife Daniela, their two children, and Valdir’s parents, all of whom help run the farm. “Joaninha” translates to “ladybug”, named after his mother’s experience watching agro-chemicals destroy the once thriving ladybug population on the farms, killing off the land’s natural pest control—the family’s mission is to farm regeneratively and bring the ladybugs back. Both farms utilize raised beds for drying naturals, which are constantly rotated and sorted by the families during the drying. 

Boa Vista and Joaninha have become evangelists within FAF’s network. They are synonymous with the effort to revive small coffee farms and create a new market for the “other” Brazil: the harder-to-access family plots with high-quality potential and an embodiment of community ideals deserving of visibility among specialty roasters.

• Region: Cerro do Cigano, Caconde, São Paulo state

• Producers / Farms: Sítio Boa Vista & Sítio Joaninha

• Altitudes: 1200-1350 masl

• Varieties: Red Catauí and Caturra

• Processing: Full natural.