In Quiet Hopes of Absolution

Suitable for all brewing methods.

Producer

Alfonso Anzueto

Farm

Finca Calahute

Region

San Pedro Necta, Huehuetenango

Varietal

Maragogype

Washed

Altitude

1,300 - 1,500 MASL

Finca Calahute sits above the town of San Pedro Necta in Huehuetenango, western Guatemala. The Anzueto family took the land in the 1950s and planted it to coffee in 1952. It is now held by Alfonso Anzueto, the third generation of the family to run it, who inherited the farm from his father and moved production toward separated lots. The estate covers 226 hectares, 210 of them under coffee, which makes it large for a district where most holdings are small. Alfonso oversees each stage himself, from nursery selection through to dry milling.

Harvest runs from December to the end of April and draws around 120 pickers from the surrounding villages. Cherry is delivered to the family wet mill, built on the farm in 1958, where it is hand sorted, weighed, pulped and fermented for 24 to 36 hours. Parchment is then washed, graded by weight in channels and dried on patio for 7 to 12 days. As the coffee approaches 11 percent moisture it is covered through the middle of the day and returned to patio only as the sun drops, lengthening the final stage of drying.

The Maragogype plot is one of the oldest on the farm. Alfonso's father planted it around 30 years ago from seed brought out of El Salvador. The variety is a rare mutation of Typica, first identified in Bahia, Brazil in 1870, and is known for oversized beans and a defined, weight-driven cup. Coffee from this plot formed part of the lot that placed Calahute in the 2018 Cup of Excellence. Shade trees are left unpruned across the estate and three plots are given over to bees, holding soil moisture and farm biodiversity in place.