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  • Guatemala Micro Lot Coffee from Puff Coffee
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Guatemala Micro Lot

$26.00
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There's a coffee farm in the middle of Antigua, right there among the ruined convents and the taco stands and the yellow arch everyone photographs. Sixteen hectares of it, downtown, under three volcanoes, one of which smokes on the skyline like it's thinking something over. The trees are bourbon and some of them are 135 years old, bent all the way down until their tops brush the ground, like they got tired of standing up straight a century ago. The same family's had the place since 1850. Cranberry and orange in the cup, brown sugar settling under it. You'd walk right past the gate and never know a coffee this old was growing behind it.

Region: Antigua, Sacatepéquez, Guatemala
Farm: San Carlos
Owners: Ana María and Estela Durán
Farm Manager: Jorge Alberto Zamora
Altitude: 1,500 to 1,700 masl
Variety: Bourbon
Process: Washed
Best for: Pour over, filter, espresso

Bourbon trees don't usually live this long. These ones are 100, 120, some of them 135 years old, and instead of pulling them out and starting fresh the way most farms would, San Carlos kept them and taught them to bow. Over the decades the trees got trained so that once they reach a certain height they bend and grow back toward the ground, and by now a lot of them are down there touching it. There's a plain reason, the cherries stay in reach so pickers can strip a tree clean without cutting the top off and costing next year, but plain reasons don't make it look any less like a grove of very old creatures leaning down to hear you better.

The farm's been in one family since Carlos Durán planted it in 1850. Ana María and Estela Durán own it now, six generations down the line, and Jorge Alberto Zamora runs the day to day, same as he's done for over fifty years. He was born on San Carlos. A good number of these trees he watched come up from seed, which is a strange thing to be able to say about a plant older than you are. His father managed the place for sixty-five years before him.

And it's all sitting in the middle of town. Not out in the hills like you'd expect, but downtown Antigua, coffee growing a short walk from crumbling Spanish churches and cobblestones and cafés, with Agua and Fuego and Acatenango standing guard over the whole valley and Fuego every so often breathing smoke across the sky. People come from everywhere to fall a little in love with this town. Somewhere in it, quietly, a coffee farm has been minding its own centuries-old business the entire time.

There's one thing about the place nobody's ever explained. San Carlos harvests December through April, sometimes as early as November, while every farm around it packs up after March. Months longer, every year, and no one has a good answer for why. In a town this old and this strange, sitting under a volcano that won't stop smoking, a farm with a secret feels about right.

Cranberry and orange up top, tart and bright, brown sugar filling in warm underneath. It drinks like the town it comes from. A little magic, a lot of history, and something going on just under the surface that you can't quite name.

  • location Single Origin