Manuel Domingo
Manuel Domingo grows coffee in the same village as Sebastiana Gaspar, Concepción Huista. Many of our Guatemalan releases come from the Huista micro-region, due in part to the excellent quality, and to our partners from Primavera’s focus here, with a warehouse and lab located in San Antonio Huista to better support the producers of the region. Manuel inherited his farm recently, and converted it from growing food crops to coffee after seeing the potential of many other producers around him. The plot is only 1.5 hectares, and Manuel chose to plant 100% Caturra, protected from many diseases and pests by the very high altitude here, over 1900 masl.
Manuel also uses a very similar processing routine to Sebastiana, where coffee is first floated to remove foreign matter and low density cherries before de-pulping. The coffee is then fermented for 24 hours in open tanks before being thoroughly washed. In a similar step to Sebastiana, and also to many large processing stations in East Africa, the coffee is then soaked in clean water for a further 24 hours. This stabilises and equalises moisture content, and allows for a further sorting for lower density and defective coffee.
This leads to a very clean and dense cup, where the profile has been somewhat softened, here reminiscent of very ripe strawberries and sweet and creamy milk chocolate.
Huehuetenango
The remoteness of the region makes sourcing coffee a challenge here, the journey to farms often takes days over unforgiving terrain, and would-be coffee buyers require knowledge of the local dialects, or an experienced guide. We have visited and worked with our Guatemalan partners at Primavera for the past eight years, and have been stunned by the beauty of both the coffees they have been sourcing, and of this captivating region.