San Andres is a small coffee town way up in the mountains of Lempira, in the west of Honduras. It’s steep, covered in pine and oak, with springs running down the hillsides. More than half the people here are Lenca, and the whole department is named after Lempira, a Lenca leader who fought the Spanish in the 1500s. The coffee farms sit between 1500 and 1800m, most of them are small and family-run, and their coffee usually ends up in a big regional lot where nobody ever learns who grew it.
Last year that started to change. Benjamin Paz runs Beneficio San Vicente in Santa Barbara, the mill his family started back in the 1950s, and he's a good friend and someone who has done a ton to push coffee forward in Honduras. He started a program that connects these small producers directly with roasters like us, giving each producer's coffee a chance to find a match and a shot at being bought for what it actually tastes like.
So we cupped through them, and not every lot made it. The ones that did come from Nehemias Guevara, Patricio Navarro, Claudio Perez, Jose Leon Mateo, Glenis Portillo and Julio Garcia. The coffee is mostly Pacas with some Bourbon and Typica, all washed. Each lot is too small on its own, so we blended them together.
And it lives up to the name. Across the table these lots kept showing honey, panela, brown sugar, walnut, nougat and milk chocolate, with bits of orange and plum keeping things lively.
It's our first year buying in San Andres, and I'm really happy with where it's started.
