Los Encinos

Santos Ismael López built his farm one harvest at a time. He started young, with a small plot, and reinvested the return from each season until it grew to the 3.5 hectares he works today in Guazpololo, La Paz. Coffee is the livelihood that supports his family, and he intends to keep them part of it for years to come.

This year brought a milestone: his coffee reached the international market for the first time, at a price that will lift his family and fund the farm's next stage. He tends the land traditionally, clearing with machete and azadón and feeding the soil by hand. At harvest, a team of three picks only ripe cherries, floats them to sort out any defects, depulps the same day, ferments for 24 hours, then dries the parchment slowly on solar beds over 20 days.

The variety is IH90, a Honduran cultivar usually grown lower down and rarely given the spotlight. Santos grows it at 1,800m, high for the variety, and the altitude rewards the cup with more sweetness and clarity than IH90 is often given credit for.