A Big Dream. A QUEST to unite cacao & coffee.

We are finally in Guatemala birthplace of chocolate, home to the Mayas and an amazing speciality coffee origin.

We see smiles on people´s faces, the taxi driver who picked us up at the airport started off by welcoming us and proudly saying: “Guatemala is a magnificent country and place to discover”. He spoke high about Guatemala´s people, gastronomy and nature, above all nature and the importance of it.

After an almost three hours car drive from the city to Acatenango, more precisely Aldea el Socorro, we finally arrived to Finca La Senda. Again, smiles and amazing hospitality.  The family, Yancy, Arnoldo and Maria-Eugenia Perez who own and run, perhaps, one of the most human driven coffee farms, gives us a warm welcome and are very excited to show us around.

The second we go through the gates and to the backyard of the house we are hit by a delightful and sour sweet fragrance of coffee cherries being dried following the natural process in carefully raised drying beds, the way the coffee was moved around shows the patterns of care, passion and love for coffee and, specially, details.

Immediately after, we arrived to the integrated and super well smart and thought through dry and wet mills. Yes, Finca La Senda grow, harvest, process, dry and rest / store coffee themselves. It´s a vertically integrated Specialty Coffee Farm. Every single lot being dried of naturals and honeys carry a label indicating lot number, process type, date of processing and humidity levels, everything is well documented and monitored to make sure that coffee is developed to its most outstanding possibilities.

One thing I am blown away by, it´s the black honey processed coffees, when lying in the sun  for a swift oxidation of 16 to 18 hours, they look like toffee covered pop-corn and when you hold it in your hands the brown sugar with black hints color and the fact that coffee seeds are almost glued to each other and you have to separate them by hand, it resembles to the sample process as when you separate pop-corn gently glued by toffee. And, the fragrance is, of course, sour but pleasantly followed soon after a honey miel scent. It´s a truly indulgence smell experience.

The other thing I was blown away, was to see the gate that opened up to an amazingly structured sustainable and well taken care of forest. The regenerative and agroforestry cultivation is one of a kind, there all sort of fruit trees from banana to tall trees providing the shade coffee varieties grown there such as Pache, Caturra, Bourbon and Geisha so badly need. Remember that coffee trees love wet, humid and shade. And, combined with the volcanic soil, super fertile as a result of the active volcanos surrounding the farm, the micro-climate and altitude add altitude (1600 - 1850 masl), provides the naturals conditions for growing amazing coffee.

Last but not least, I was introduced to the entire team working at Finca La Senda from Juanito who is responsible for helping Maria Eugenia, who is one of the most knowledgeable coffee processing person I know with a love and passion for coffee beyond this world, always thanking Juanito and the boys for the incredible work they do, to Alberto, who is a self-taught agronomist always working with utter care and love for the forest and coffee trees. Then, I had the chance to meet the rest of the people working at la Finca, again smiles and happiness all over the place. And, I am pretty sure this is one the reasons Finca La Senda is a family, yes also a coffee business, but the leadership of Yancy, Maria-Eugenia and Arnoldo, caring for people and serving the people working at the Finca, makes the people working there feel esteemed and respected. That´s why they go the extra mile for not only growing and processing great coffee whilst protecting nature. The people here are true protectors of the forest, preserving it with respect and love just like the Mayas once did.

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People always make the difference. The lords of the forest genes prevailed and Finca La Senda and its people are one example of that.  The people working in the forest whether sowing, growing, hervesting or processing the coffee in Finca La Senda own wet-mill, inspire of not having the economic and financial wealth of Westerners, they have a different wealth. The love and passion for what they do, the fact of being out in the forest, being the lords of the forest, preserving and protecting it whilst working with coffee and being part of a family that respect and esteem them seems to be everything to them and, perhaps, far more important than economic riches. There is true sense of community when someone is in need, the community of Aldea El Socorro gathers around to help. And, one thing that reminded me on this first day is that the love and care for the people we esteem, doing what you are passionate about whilst making sure you are doing good will always be far more important of the economic and financial wealth. To me they seem to have it all but it is up to us.

We profoundly believe in the fact that we Westerners whether  roasters, baristas and/ or consumers we have also a fundamental responsibility. We need to make sure we are supporting the right farms and paying a rightful price for coffee and / or cacao so people working in farms like Finca La Senda can earn more so they can improve their communities, because make no mistake they deserve a rightful share of the ecomic wealth generated by the coffee and chocolate industries so houses, infrastructure and access to schools and health care is possible so they in return stay well, educated, passionate and strong to keep on giving us the coffee we all love and with the quality we expect.