This washed coffee from Chiapas is clean and balanced, with notes of baked apple, caramel, and toasted pecan.

This month’s selection is another fan favorite from years past, and one that made us shift our attention to focus on the excellent coffees being produced in southern Mexico. We had never before sourced a single-origin Mexican coffee as a featured microlot before we tried a lot of washed coffee from the township of San Cristobal de las Casas two years ago. Since then, we’ve been sourcing washed coffees from Chiapas and Puebla, primarily using them for blend components when we’re looking to add a balanced chocolatey, nougaty flavor to the mix. Situated in the tropical highlands of the Sierra Madre del Sur mountain range, this small township is often referred to by the locals as “Pueblo Magico” or Magic Town. San Cristobal is renowned not only for its world class coffee, but also for its Spanish colonial era architecture, with many of the homes and storefronts of the town being painted with bright, vibrant colors. This lot of coffee is produced by a community of smallholder farmers that are, for the most part, from the indigenous Tzotzil and Tzeltal cultures who continue to speak their traditional Mayan language. The coffees grown in San Cristobal de las Casas are most commonly grown as a cash crop alongside family garden plots, a practice that is very common in the rural coffee country of Chiapas. The region benefits not only from the high mountain altitudes, but also the coastal weather patterns that continually replenish the area with the perfect balance of rainfall and humidity. Such conditions are perfect for the cultivation of specialty arabica coffee, and the quality shines through the cup. The clarity, balance and complexity of this coffee made it impossible for us to pass up, and it’s one we know our community will enjoy! 

Why we chose this coffee: Aside from being an excellent washed coffee, sourcing from smallholder farmers who come together to form a larger cooperative is something we have always believed in. Not only do these cooperatives provide essential infrastructure, education, and community resilience, they also serve as a way to organize the coffee farmers into a union with a common cause: to provide resources for their members and to advocate for fair, equitable prices in the global specialty market. The various cultivars, environmental conditions and microclimates of each family farm impart their own unique qualities to the overall flavor profile, and when processed together at the mill and sorted for consistency, these coffees coalesce to craft a blend profile that is better than the sum of its parts.