Collaborative Sourcing
When coffee is cultivated and harvested from small family owned farms, exporters play a critical role in ensuring quality and fairness. The collaborative sourcing team of Terra Coffeas Mexico and an export company called Galguera Gomez hits the mark on delivering high quality community lots with traceability and transparent pricing for farmers. Galguera Gomez has been preparing and exporting coffee since 1985 and specializes in preparing traceable Oaxacan lots and paying producers higher incomes for the quality of their coffee. Terra Coffeas Mexico provides post-harvest strategies and cupping expertise that has brought many talented producers into the specialty coffee fold. The model is the perfect hybrid where individual farmers take responsibility for farm management and the post harvest process with support from Terra Coffeas Mexico, ensuring that each farmer has access to best practices.
Growing Region
This particular lot comes from families living near the town of Santa Cruz Ozolotepec who cultivate coffee on farms with just a few acres. Imagine starting at sea level in the popular Mexican beach destination of Puerto Escondido and traveling along progressively steeper and curvier roads through villages, where the local population still wear traditional indigenous clothing, eventually arriving at a lush forest intercropped with coffee, bananas, corn, beans, fruit trees, and views of the Pacific Ocean. This is the Oaxacan coffee growing region known as the zona Pluma where the Sierra Madre del Sur coastal mountain range is peppered with small coffee farms.
Processing details
During the harvest, each producer follows a strict protocol which includes picking cherries at optimum ripeness, hand sorting, floating to remove damaged and undeveloped beans, depulping and fermenting in two steps (24 hours dry and then another 24 hours submerged in water). After fermentation, the parchment is washed and placed on patios or raised beds to slowly dry to 11%.
Export preparation
Dried coffee is transported to the Galguera Gomez dry mill facility where coffee is received, cupped and selected for export. The Galguera Gomez preparation ensures traceability and quality control throughout the post harvest process, which is a vital resource for establishing higher prices for producers.
