Jesús Salazar

Cafeólogo

Cafeólogo is a project founded by Jesús Salazar, focusing mainly on indigenous coffee growers in the area around San Cristobal de las Casas in central Chiapas, the southernmost region of Mexico. San Cristobal is located rather close to the border with Guatemala, and is in fact only around 200 km or about a 5 hour drive from San Marcos Huista in Huehuetenango, where we have purchased several coffees in the past.

Starting in 2010, Jesús initially worked with 4 small producers, but soon many producers in the area were curious about the project and the prices they could be paid, through their newly found access to the speciality market. To be able to accept so many more farmers into the project, Jesús realised that quality control would be very difficult if each producer was to grow and process their own coffee. So he made it his mission to add value to each group of producer’s work through careful processing, undertaking a Q-processing course and building two community wet mills, Sibactel and San Pedro.

As Jesús expanded the land, he retained conservation as the key pillar of his work here. The plot now spans 240 hectares, but less than 10% are under production of coffee, planted sparsely with the Marsellesa varietal. The rest is left to the forest, allowing a complex native biodiversity to spread, maintaining the rare cloud forest environment. The careful natural processing of this lot, along with an anaerobic pre-fermentation and Cafeólogo’s expertise, leads to a cup with complex fruit notes, with elements of strawberry, raspberry and peach, all on a base of rich dark chocolate.