I've met a lot of good people in coffee and Adrian Cabrera and the Falla family sit at the top of that list.
They've been growing in the Antigua valley since 1890. Five generations. A serious amount of land. On paper they're a big producer, and you know what that usually means; except they're the exact opposite of it. Kind, curious, endlessly willing to sit there and pick apart what they could be doing better. Three generations back, Arturo Falla Cofiño started an association that still puts schooling and healthcare in front of farm workers and the small producers around them. That's the family. We've been buying from them since 2018 and it has been a pleasure every single year.
These days I spend most of my time with the new generation, led by Adrian Cabrera. He joined the family operation in 2017 and has quietly been turning the place into a laboratory ever since – new varieties, ample planting densities, processing experiments, a micro-mill built for the small, cool stuff. They're chasing cup profiles nobody in this area even thought about before.
This lot is one of theirs. Bourbon, 1850m, washed, fermented the traditional way with an unusual amount of care.
And here's the thing. San Miguel and the wider Antigua region make mild, comfortable, crowd-pleasing coffee. That's their style, and it sells for a reason. This one is all of that but then it keeps going. It's the Antigua you already know, with the volume turned up.
