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Guatemala Palencia Finca La Pia La Aurora Washed
$5.00 - $277.38
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Country: Guatemala
Region: La Joya Larga, Palencia, Fraijanes Plateau Region, Guatemala
Farm: Finca La Pia
Farmer/Grower: Victor Calderon
Varieties: Bourbon & Caturra
Processing: Washed
Altitude: 1700-1800 m.a.s.l.
Humidity: 11%
Density: 1.20 g/ml
Harvest Date: February, 2022
Arrival Date: August, 2022
Grade: SHB
Marks: 011-0890-0087
SCA Cupping Score: 85.50
- Caramel fragrance, sweet almond aroma, notes of milk chocolate, mandarin orange, sugar icing, with a fresh aftertaste of orange blossoms, bright citrus acidity, medium bodied with a silky mouthfeel. Very sweet and well balanced.
- We recommend keeping Don Victor’s La Aurora lot in the light to medium roast range. The sweetness is at the forefront of this cup profile but the delicate florals and acidity shine in the lighter roasts.
Finca La Pia has a history of quality with multiple top 20 Cup Of Excellence finishes
most recently in 2020 with a score of over 87 points.
The farm is located near La Joya Larga in Palencia, Guatemala
which is part of Fraijanes Plateau Region. Coffee at Finca La Pia is grown at approximately 1,700 to 1,800 meters above sea level.
The fully washed processing is traditional washed depulped cherries which are washed with clean, fresh water and fermented for 24 hours before being dried on patios. Rainfall is approximately about 1,200 mm or 47 inches per year.
The “La Aurora” lot is sorted by cupping each of the picking days on the farm. The highest cupping day-lots and nano-lots are separated to build the La Aurora lot.
Don Victor Calderon is the owner of Finca La Pia and implements a variety of very interesting cultivation techniques. Along similar lines of thought to “dry farms” or “natural wines” in the wine industry, Don Victor believes that the coffee plants should receive as little input as possible and uses only natural or organic methods to manage the plant health. Unlike many coffee farms around the world, Don Victor does not feed trees with fertilizers and instead uses a California red worm compost, manure and nitrogen fixating plants to keep the soil healthy. To manage the coffee leaf rust, “la roya”, Victor does not use typical sprays but instead applies bentonite clay, which is found naturally in the soil on the farm, on to the coffee leaves. This practice, combined with the organic plant nutrition management yields highly resistant coffee trees with great quality potential!
The Calderon family has been involved in coffee for nearly 140 years! Victor’s great-great-grandfather Don Florencio Calderon acquired a farm by the Guatemalan coast in 1885. This coastal farm focused on volume production, and Don Florencio’s descendants kept this business model for many generations. The Calderon family in descending order from Don Florencio, Don Marcos his son, Victor his grandson, Marcos, his great-grandson (and father of the current Victor Calderon) have been in coffee for almost all of Guatemala’s coffee history. Along the way, there have been different professions, but the family has always returned to coffee. For example, Victor’s grandfather, Don Victor senior, collaborated with Dr. Rodolfo Robles in discovering the microfilaria parasite that is transmitted by mosquito bites in some regions of Africa and Central America, and that causes a disease that renders the patient blind. Field work took place in their coffee plantations in Guatemala.
As interesting as the family’s long coffee history may be, it has been kept alive by the vision of Don Victor Calderon who noticed the changing trends in the coffee industry and let go of the coastal mass coffee production to specialize in high quality specialty coffees. The coastal farms, being more suitable for rubber plantations, were soon turned to 100% rubber cultivation. Don Victor acquired La Pia in 2000 and has focused on cultivating specialty coffee ever since. The farm, as well as producing coffee, is also producing avocado, and some other native fruits to the area. By diversifying the plantation, Don Victor has achieved an interesting balance that allows for a very efficient and productive land.
Being on a dramatic and steep hillside, Finca La Pia is also only planted with coffee in areas that allow for easy and safe movement for the pickers and farm workers. The other half of the farm is steep slopes, rocky terrain and thus left untouched. It is certified by the Guatemalan Institute for forest protection, and registered as a natural reserve, which gives the farm an enclosure that only thick natural forest can provide.