Guatemala — Huehuetenango
Visiting the farms and families behind our coffee
We have a soft spot for Huehuetenango. Some of the coffees we look forward to most come from these mountains, and over the years, the names on those bags have become people we know and care about.
On this trip with Primavera Coffee Importers, we spent time on farms, worked alongside producers at their wet mills, and shared meals with families whose coffee we’ve roasted back home. We also followed the coffee through receiving, milling, and cupping, and met young entrepreneurs building businesses in their communities.
We came home with a better understanding of the work behind each harvest. We also came home with memories of watermelon on a patio, a family lunch, and plenty of laughter. Those are the things we want to share here.
Why we love Huehuetenango
Huehuetenango sits in Guatemala’s western highlands, near the border with Mexico. Its high, nonvolcanic mountains help make it a distinctive coffee region. According to Anacafé, Guatemala’s coffee association, warm, dry winds from Mexico’s Tehuantepec plain help protect the region from frost, allowing coffee to grow at unusually high elevations.
These conditions can produce coffees with lively acidity and plenty of depth. The cups vary from farm to farm, of course. That variety is part of what keeps us curious about Huehue.
The landscape also shapes the work. Getting coffee down a steep mountain takes planning, and many producers process their harvests at their own small wet mills. Water access, drying space, and the availability of skilled pickers all affect what a harvest looks like. Visiting gave us a much clearer sense of the decisions producers make long before we turn on the roaster.
Our connection through Primavera
Primavera was founded by Nadine Rasch, who grew up in a Guatemalan coffee farming family. Through its sister company, La Central de Café, Primavera connects producers with roasters and supports the work that happens between the farm and export.
That includes agronomists working with producers on farm management and processing, as well as a team handling quality control and logistics. It’s ongoing work, across seasons. A conversation about a better cup might also involve the cost of a new washing tank or a way to improve drying.
We appreciate the chance to learn through those relationships. Producers know their farms best, and spending time with them helps us ask better questions about the coffee we buy.
The families behind Primavera Family
Several producers we visited have contributed coffee to Primavera Family, a regional lot that brings together coffees from small farms in Huehuetenango.
Primavera developed this offering in part to create a market for producers whose harvests may be too small to sell as individual microlots. The coffees are combined into a consistent regional offering, with traceability back to the contributing farms.
We love Primavera Family as an everyday cup. It has the sweetness and familiarity we reach for often, with enough brightness to keep it interesting. Meeting some of the people behind it made an already favorite coffee feel even more personal.
Finca La Gomez
Catarina Ramirez Mendez
Catarina grows coffee in the mountainous area around Com, in Jacaltenango. Finca La Gomez sits at about 2,100 meters above sea level, with varieties including Bourbon and Caturra.
When we visited, a road down to the farm was being built. Catarina spoke about her beginnings in coffee and the pride she takes in a farm run primarily by women. She was honest about the difficulties, too.
She also shared her excitement about being a young entrepreneur with Jovemcafé, a local group we got to know during the trip. Hearing the women speak Popti’, their Mayan language, with so much laughter and encouragement for one another was a highlight.
La Esmeralda
Crispin Matias
Part of Primavera Family Lot
Crispín welcomed us with watermelon and bananas on his patio. We’re very happy to be the kind of coffee people who remember the snacks.
His farm, La Esmeralda, is near San Antonio Huista. Crispín has spent decades growing coffee and helped establish the ASIAST cooperative, bringing small producers together. In a published interview, he describes the importance of shade trees and careful picking, as well as the pressure that changing weather and rising costs put on a farm.
Those concerns came up during our visit. He told us it was difficult to find enough pickers and that the harvest was smaller because of climate conditions.
Crispín also helped us understand how drying can be managed more carefully with the right infrastructure. Drying speed is a decision producers can influence, rather than simply leaving coffee outside and waiting. Hearing him explain his work gave us more appreciation for the experience behind a consistently good lot.
Las Joyas
Rudy Lopez Castillo
Part of Primavera Family Lot
Rudy grew up in a farming family and began growing coffee on land he inherited in 1996. He and his family have built Las Joyas over years of work and investment.
During our visit, Rudy spoke about rising labor and production costs. Uneven rainfall had affected flowering and reduced the harvest. He was also thinking ahead, with plans to add another depulper and washing tank.
A depulper removes the skin and much of the fruit from a coffee cherry. Along with washing infrastructure, it helps a producer manage the harvest after picking. Improvements like these take money, even in a season when there’s less coffee to sell.
La Esperanza
Francisco Morales & Family
Part of Primavera Family Lot
La Esperanza means “The Hope.” Francisco has explained that the name reflects what coffee made possible for his family.
He has spent more than four decades growing coffee, with family members involved in the farm’s work. His coffees placed second in Primavera’s quality competition in both 2018 and 2019, recognition of the care behind the harvests.
We got to process coffee at the wet mill during our visit. It was a chance to connect what we understand from cupping and roasting with the work that happens right after the cherries are picked.
We also learned that children of harvest workers could attend school while their parents worked.
Then Francisco and his wife made us lunch. Sharing a table with their family was incredibly special. We’re grateful for the time they gave us, and for the welcome.
Flora Ramos & Sister Carmelina Ramos
We’ve been bringing Flora’s coffee to Edison since 2018, and we’ve purchased lots from her sister Carmelina as well. They’re two producers we’re always happy to see.
Flora’s farm, Las Gemelas, takes its name from her twin daughters. Her work has included improvements to picking, processing, and drying, along with investment in her wet mill. Those kinds of changes happen through patient attention over multiple harvests.
Our conversation also turned to water. During the visit, Flora described a community supply arriving only every eight days and the difficulty of getting water pumped to such a high elevation. It gave us a more concrete understanding of a challenge that affects daily life as well as coffee production.
We value the chance to hear about the things that matter to Flora and Carmelina beyond the coffee we purchase. They’re thoughtful, capable producers, and getting to know them over time has been a gift. And yes, we remain big fans of Carmelina’s cardigan.
El Mirador
Miguel and Ever Mendoza
Father and Son
Miguel Mendoza is a second generation coffee producer in El Pajal. He began with land inherited from his father and grew the farm over time. El Mirador means “the lookout,” a fitting name for a farm in these mountains.
When we visited, Miguel spoke proudly about working with his sons. He wanted us to understand how much effort goes into every harvest, and why good prices matter if the family is going to keep doing that work.
That conversation stayed with us. The price of a coffee affects a family’s ability to maintain the farm and make improvements for the next season. It also matters to the next generation deciding whether to continue in coffee.
This marks our fourth year bringing El Mirador to Edison. We’re honored to be part of the relationship as Miguel and Ever carry the farm’s work from father to son. We look forward to continuing to learn from them.
Finca El Mura
José Lopez
Part of Primavera Family Lot
José was our driver during our stay in Huehuetenango, and we also visited his farm and wet mill. We’re grateful for the time he spent helping us get from place to place and welcoming us into his own work.
Receiving Station
Josué Cano
At La Central’s receiving station in San Antonio Huista, Josué showed us how incoming coffee is recorded and identified. Our notes filled up with lot numbers, weights, and the information that connects an arriving delivery with its producer.
That record keeping is a big part of traceability. As coffee moves from the receiving station toward milling and export, the team needs to keep track of whose coffee it is and which lot it belongs to.
Josué also talked us through the payment stages associated with delivery and final cupping.
Primavera Dry Mill
Later in the trip, we traveled outside Guatemala City to La Central’s dry mill. This was a different part of the journey from our farm visits in Huehuetenango, and a chance to see how coffee is prepared for export.
The dry mill removes the parchment layer from dried coffee and sorts the green beans before bagging. La Central also carries out quality control and export preparation here. Its mill is partially powered by solar energy.
We met dry mill manager Santos Moran, whose experience spans harvesting, wet milling, and preparing coffee for shipment. Alongside managing the mill, he works with honey and natural processing and with producers in central Guatemala.
Processing coffee from Antonio González
At La Central, we got to help honey process cherries from Antonio González, a producer in Fraijanes. Fraijanes is a separate growing region from Huehuetenango, so this part of the trip gave us a look at coffee from another area of Guatemala.
With honey processing, the skin is removed and the coffee dries with some of its sticky fruit layer, called mucilage, still attached. There’s no honey added. The name refers to that sticky layer.
We worked with the cherries before the coffee went onto raised drying beds. It gave us a closer look at a process we often discuss through the finished cup.
Yellow, red, and black honey labels generally refer to differences in the amount of fruit left on the coffee, but producers don’t all use the terms in exactly the same way. Asking how a particular lot was processed tells us more than the color label alone.
Cupping At La Central Cupping Lab
We also spent time at La Central’s cupping lab and café. Cupping is how we evaluate coffees side by side, paying attention to flavor, sweetness, and consistency, and checking for defects.
After visiting the farms, we had more context for the coffees on the table. We had heard about smaller harvests, plans for new equipment, and the difficulty of finding pickers. Those conversations helped us understand the work represented by each sample.
For us, thoughtful sourcing means carrying that context into our buying decisions. We want to keep learning what producers need to sustain good work, alongside learning what we enjoy in the cup.
Community projects with The Chain Collaborative
Co-creating opportunities in the coffee sector
Coffee was also our introduction to people building businesses beyond their farms. Through The Chain Collaborative, we learned more about two groups in Huehuetenango, Jovemcafé and ViCafé.
The Chain Collaborative’s Community Led Development Incubator supports local organizations with project planning, funding, and opportunities to learn from peers. The organizations themselves identify their priorities and lead the work.
We appreciate that approach. People living in a community bring the knowledge and relationships needed to shape a project that fits. Hearing directly from these entrepreneurs helped us understand what they hoped to accomplish and why.
The Chain Collaborative’s Incubation Project is a finalist for the 2024 SCA Sustainability Awards
Jovemcafé and new opportunities in Jacaltenango
Jovem stands for Young entrepreneurs. See @thechaincollaborative
Jovemcafé brings together 25 young coffee entrepreneurs from the Jacaltenango area. Founded in 2017, the group has worked to improve opportunities for its members through coffee sales, financial training, and a shared savings and loans fund.
Its work with The Chain Collaborative included an egg business and a tree nursery. Selling eggs creates another source of income, while the nursery supports access to trees for local farms. These projects also give members experience running a business together.
Women within the group took on leadership of the hen project. Paula Pérez described how involving everyone in planning helped more members speak up and take responsibility. The Chain Collaborative continues to highlight the group’s egg business and nursery in its account of their work.
Paula is also part of La Central’s producer support team. Originally from the Qom community in Jacaltenango, she speaks Popti’ and Spanish and works with producers on improving coffee quality.
Getting to know Jovemcafé added to what we had heard from Catarina about the group’s work and the encouragement its members give one another.
ViCafé and a nursery for the community
ViCafé is a group of young coffee professionals in San Antonio Huista. Its goals include improving opportunities to sell local coffee and creating work that helps young people see a future in the region’s coffee sector.
The group’s nursery project brings coffee seedlings, fruit trees, and timber trees closer to the producers who need them. We got to learn about the plants they were growing and their plans for expanding the nursery.
ViCafé originally planned a compost system alongside the nursery. The Chain Collaborative’s 2023 report records that supply difficulties delayed that part of the project, so the group redirected funding toward more seedlings and an expanded nursery.
We appreciate the practical thinking behind that decision, and we’re glad we had the chance to learn about the group’s work.
Bringing these relationships home
Our mission at Edison is to cultivate relationships and explore beauty. On this trip, that meant making time to listen, asking questions, and accepting the generosity of people who opened their farms and homes to us.
We’re grateful to Catarina, Crispín, Rudy, Francisco and his family, Flora and Carmelina, Miguel and Ever, José, and everyone who helped us learn along the way. We’re grateful to Primavera and La Central for the work that connects these producers with our roastery.
When we brew a coffee from Huehuetenango now, we have more people and places to think about. We hope sharing a little of that experience makes your next cup feel more connected, too.
