Guatemala Twi'Ha

A sweet and dessert-like coffee with notes of candied figs, chocolate oranges, caramel and vanilla paste.

Listening closely over the buzz of a distant weed-whacker and the sigh of the wind, you can hear the parchment coffee in its final stages of drying, crackling delicately like Rice Krispies just hitting cold milk.  The heat radiating from the smooth, white concrete of Armando Gomez’s drying patio continues to dry the coffee as the late afternoon sun starts to sink into undulating horizon.  

The patio sits between Armando’s home, and the small, well-kept beneficio (wet-mill) where the coffee cherries arrive from his fields at the end of each harvest day to be de-pulped, fermented and washed before they are spread out to dry. 

The home, benefico, and drying patio sits near the mid-point of the farm that spreads vertically over the face of just one of the thousands of slopes that make up the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, the highest non-volcanic mountain range in Central America.

“My grandfather first planted this land many years ago” Armando tells us gesturing over the bushy, deeply-green coffee shrubs that carpet the hill under the mottled shade of citrus and leguminous Chalum trees.  “And I have worked this farm,” which has been passed down through the generations, “since I was a boy.”  

As the ideals of high-yield farming emanated through the rural coffee production areas of the world in the 1960’s and 70’s , pure arabica varieties on the farm were replaced with high-yielding, hybridized varietals while shade and healthy plant spacing was sacrificed for a more intensive planting of coffee shrubs.  

This focus on quantity over quality which is still promoted by most government-funded coffee support and regulation agencies around the world, has helped propagate the commodification of the crop through low quality coffees that command low prices.

Around 2010 Armando purchased the farm from his aunt and uncle and has since been renovating the land to be a reflection of the style of farm his grandfather first set-up.  Lot by lot he is thinning out the number of coffee shrubs and increasing the number of shade trees.  He is also removing any hybridized varietals and replacing them with pure arabica varieties such as Typica, Bourbon, Caturra, Gesha and SL-28.  

The re-diversification of flora on the farm is directly benefiting the surrounding environment and his focus on growing heirloom arabica varietals coupled with his precise harvesting and post-harvest methods is resulting in differentiated coffees that command prices much higher than those on the commodities market.  

Armando has created a sustainable farm as well as a sustainable business model which has allowed him to continually reinvest in and grow his farm while planning for the future.  We have been purchasing Armando’s coffees since 2015 and each year we grow more excited by the coffees he produces and by what the future looks to hold.

We roast and ship Monday - Friday.
Orders received before 9am typically ship same day.