This washed red bourbon from Finca Alaska has fruit forward notes of pink lady apple, dried cranberry with a rich brown butter finish.

As an international community of individuals who love coffee, we are very privileged to live in a time where technology allows us to learn more about where our coffee comes from, and moreover, the people and communities that make it possible. Incredible coffee doesn’t just happen, it involves the hard work and dedication of everyone involved in the supply chain, and not least the producers at origin. Rodin Villatoro’s work is a great example of how both tradition and innovation intertwine to craft exceptional coffee. Having obtained his degree as an Agronomical Engineer in 2017, Rodin’s thesis explored the subject of hydroponics, a method of agriculture where crops are grown in nutrient rich water rather than soil, a practice that dates back to the early days of the Aztec Empire. Rodin took what he learned at university back to his family’s network of small farms and began to expand on the work they began decades before. As is often the case, the trade is a part of the family heritage as Rodin and and his brother Jenner are the third generation to take on ownership of this enterprise. Under their management, the farms have planted a number of Gesha trees and have begun to experiment with their methods, adding natural and anaerobic processing into their dynamic lineup of coffees while implementing African raised drying beds. The team at finca Alaska are meticulous about their produce and their quality control is evident in every stage from planting to exporting. Finca Alaska is situated only a few miles away from the Mexican border in the Huehuetenango department of Guatemala at a strictly high grown elevation. This particular offering is a single cultivar of Red Bourbon and as such it has all of the classic characteristics of both this cultivar and the terroir of Huehuetenango. The cherries are picked only at peak ripeness, then fermented for 40 hours in the fruit before being depulped, thoroughly washed and dried for 15 days. When this coffee landed on our cupping table courtesy of Onyx Coffee Importers, it stood head and shoulders above many of the other coffees we had the opportunity to sample. It was simply too good to pass up, and now we hope our community can experience this truly one of a kind coffee from Finca Alaska.

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