Smooth Operator

I visited El Retiro for the first time in 2024 and was blown away by its sheer beauty. The farm is very well managed and every detail seems to be scrutinized on a daily basis - the result is a beautiful looking farm whose trees seem to enjoy growing coffee. This can only mean one thing in the cup: tasty coffee!

Estuardo Falla is in charge of the Falla family farms - this is a big responsibility since they have farms spread out from Antigua to Fraijanes and they produce a good amount of coffee - so it’s not a small farm. But that’s what I really like about how Estuardo and the rest of the team - particularly his son Sebastian and his nephew Adrian - manage the operation. They are a large farm that has the quality of a small farm. This is all about the attention to detail and quality-first approach that the Falla family takes.

Although the family has been growing coffee in Antigua since the late 1800’s, El Retiro is a very new farm in a different region in Guatemala - Fraijanes. They selected this plot of land in the Fraijanes area because they found the farm to be sitting in ideal conditions for growing coffee. It also provided the family an opportunity to expand and grow in another coffee region. So when they took over the farm in 2017, they renamed it Finca El Retiro, and the complete renovation of the farm began. Traditional varieties, bourbon and caturra were planted under the shade of grevillea using same agronomic practices that have been used in the family for many years, providing amazing results.