The Sagastume family has been farming coffee for many decades, headed by Don Pedro Sagastume. Now, as Pedro grows older, he has divided his farms in multiple plots for his sons to take ownership and leadership in their own work. Nevertheless, this is a family effort, all the wet processing and drying happens centrally around the family home, with the sons and their families living only a stone’s throw away.
This Parainema comes from a plot on the ¨Los Quetzales¨ farm, managed by Pedro himself. This farm is aptly named for the common sighting of the very rare Quetzal bird. With very cool nights and warm days, this 1600 masl farm has the perfect microclimate to produce complex and bright coffees, characteristic of the Santa Barbara region.
The family has worked tirelessly to obtain their spot in the specialty coffee market through research, investing in the right infrastructure, and the development of new plots. The highlights of these investments are the expansion of the solar dryers as well as plots planted with Gesha, Pacamara and SL28 varieties, which will produce for the first time in the 2021 harvest.
This lot of Pacas coffee underwent Washed processing at the family’s wet mill. Cherries are pulped as soon as they arrive at the mill, only 30 minutes travel from the fields. The pulped coffee is dry fermented in ceramic-tiled tanks for 16–24 hours with all of the mucilage left intact. The fermented coffee is washed with fresh spring water, leaving some of the mucilage still on the parchment. This washed coffee is finally dried on raised beds in a solar dryer for 14 days.
This lot was prepped for export with our partners at Exportadora San Vicente, a family business founded by the Paz family more than forty years ago. Today, they work with over 200 producers to produce microlots, many of which have won titles in the Honduras Cup of Excellence. San Vicente is based out of Peña Blanca at the shore of La Yojoa.