Plum Runner

This coffee comes from one family in El Cielito, Santa Barbara, farming side by side. Brothers Evin, Axel and Kevin Herrera, their dad Margarito and their aunt Roselis are all neighbours, and all rockstar producers. They each produce a bunch of tiny lots through the harvest, and we blend the smallest into something bigger. This one is super sweet and syrupy, with stone fruit, but really round. It fits right into our Plum Runner and Fig Mood profiles.

El Cielito is the first coffee region I ever visited in Honduras, back on my first trip in 2011, and it still gets me. The drive winds through banana and plantain plantations, bamboo forests, and hills and valleys that just keep rolling, and the anticipation builds the whole hour before you hit the village. It's home to a bunch of famous farms, plenty of which have landed in the Cup of Excellence top 10 more than once. There's clearly something special about the place.

The Herreras are a big part of that. Evin, Axel and Kevin are brothers, Margarito is their dad, Roselis is their cousin, and their farms all sit right next to each other. Each of them produces small lots all through the harvest, and a lot of those are tiny, often less than 200 lb of green coffee. That's not enough to put on our menu on its own, so I cup through them, find the ones that complement each other, and blend them together.

That's good news for you in two ways. First, a bigger lot means the coffee sticks around for a few weeks instead of a couple of days. Second, when you put the right coffees together, the blend often ends up better than any of them on their own.

It does take some care. The coffees have to come from the same area and be similar enough varieties that their density stays consistent. It sounds like a petty detail, but it matters a lot. Mix high- and low-density beans and there's no good way to roast them: favour the dense beans and the softer ones suffer, tasting flat or bitter. This is where the Herreras being neighbours really helps. Their coffee grows in the same conditions, and this blend of Pacas, Bourbon and Yellow Catuaí roasts evenly together. All of it is fully washed in traditional fermentation tanks.

That's how you end up with a cup this sweet: syrupy, full of stone fruit, and still really round. I've been driving into El Cielito since 2011, and it still hasn't let me down.