This past February I made my first trip to origin to continue to build relationships with farmers around the globe. I spent 11 days between Guatemala and El Salvador and visited many estates and mills and cupped over 50 different coffees.
We started the trip by visiting one of our direct trade farms Finca El Injerto. Arturro Aguirre Jr. arranged transportation from Guatemala City to his farm 8 hours away in Huehuetenango. His farm was absolutely gorgeous. It was lush and green, coffee cherries were large and vibrant, pickers were upbeat and tenacious. Arturo must be doing something right! We cupped many coffees grown on the estate. These included 100% bourbon, 100% pacamara, a natural blend, a honey coffee experiment, an estate grown Panama Geisha, an estate grown Ethiopian Geisha and even dwarf mokka plants.
El Injerto estate is named for the thousands of trees on the farm that give the coffee shade. The estate is rain forest alliance certified and nearly 40% of the estate is shade trees and rainforest. El Injerto has also won first place in the Guatemala Cup of Excellence competition 3 out of the past 4 years! It has also won top place in the battle of rain forest alliance certified farms two years straight with near 92pt cupping scores both times! El Injerto is a top notch farm!
We only got to spend about 24hrs on the farm because Arturo's wife was expecting a little girl within the next week and had to get back to the city to be with her for the arrival of their first born child. But we learned so much within those 24hrs, met so many wonderful people, got exposure to over 8 varietals of coffee on one farm and had time to hike throughout the estate and tour the wet and dry mills. This is an estate that I could see spending an entire week on in the future.
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