Finca Acatenango

Finca Acatenango is named for the volcano it grows on — and you can taste that in the cup. The volcanic soil holds minerals that mass-produced coffee soil flattens out, and the elevation puts the trees at a height where the cherries take longer to ripen, building density and sweetness.

The family has been farming these slopes for four generations. The current generation manages a few dozen hectares under a shade canopy of native trees they planted themselves, which both protects the coffee plants and supports the migrating birds that pass through every spring.

What we buy is their honey-process lot — cherries depulped but left with their mucilage on through drying, which produces a rich chocolate-and-brown-sugar profile that ages well in the bag. Traditional methods, careful processing, coffee that tastes of the soil it grew in. The bag carries the place.