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La Familia Sagastume
The Sagastume family have been involved in coffee in Santa Barbara for over a century, long before the recent recognition of the potential of the area. Pedro Sagastume’s father was allocated almost 80 hectares from state-owned lands in 1908, near the village of El Zapote. This land had to be split between Pedro and his 9 siblings on his father’s death, but Pedro’s hard work over the years has expanded his land, earning his place in the speciality coffee market through tireless research and savvy investment. Pedro is the head of the family, and as he grows older, he has begun to split the family’s land between his sons Yeltsin, Yerin and Heyvis.
Coffee production is still a family effort; all of the picked cherry is still processed at the wet mill next to the family home. We visited the Sagastumes in March 2023, touring each of their pockets of land, and observing their work in processing, some of the most organised and professional we saw on our trip. We also tasted honey from the Sagastume’s production, a small side project enabled by the healthy bee population on the farms, a testament to their careful approach to farming, with no chemical fertilisers or pesticides used.
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This Parainema is an amalgamation of coffees grown on all of the family plots, harvested during May of 2023.
Parainema is a native Honduran varietal, created in response to a nematode outbreak in the mid 80’s. The Honduran Coffee Institute carefully selected Parainema from hybrid strains, looking for nematode resistance while maintaining positive attributes in the cup. This lot was processed using a washed method; de-pulped, fermented for 20 hours and washed carefully, before 14 days of drying on raised beds underneath plastic solar drying tunnels.
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This processing leads to a ripe stone fruit character, softening into a deeply sweet cup with notes of caramel. We have tasted several lots from the Sagastume family in recent years, and have been consistently impressed.
This year’s selection is much expanded after our visit, and we look forward to continue our relationship.
Earlier this year we featured the Sagastume family in our Rituals subscription, as well as in our regular line-up of seasonal coffees. The washed Parainema from Heyvis Sagastume we featured earlier in the year, is now available as our ready-to-brew steeped bags.
