Sweet Tooth Espresso La Soledad

The anti-blend made for espresso adventurers, our Sweet Tooth offering changes several times throughout the year. In the Sacatepéquez department outside of Antigua, Guatemala, Lucia Zelaya and her husband, Don Rony Asensio, cultivate Caturra and Bourbon trees at their farm, La Soledad. Shaded by ubiquitous Grevillea trees at 1750 meters above sea level, these 21 hectares of coffee trees are harvested for their fruit throughout the late Winter months. The coffee is then processed at the Zelaya family’s own Beneficio Bella Vista using a mechanical washing method. After the skin of the cherry is removed, the emerging fruit-covered beans are scrubbed clean using a water-saving ecopulper. This process helps give the coffee the crisp, bright flavors we associate with fully washed coffees, but without the significant waste of water, which can be particularly concerning in this arid region. The clean parchment-covered beans are then laid out to dry on newly constructed raised mesh beds located in a temperature-controlled warehouse–a significant quality-driven change compared to the patio-dried lots we used to purchase in years past. The result is a coffee that is sweet, clean, and amazingly complex.