GUATEMALA FTO HUEHUETENANGO BOURBON 25 KG ECOTACT BAGS

Coffee Background

Huehuetenango is perhaps Guatemala’s best-known department for bright, articulate coffees. Coffees from here are often clear-flavored and buoyant on the palate, with a balance evocative of tropical fruit juice and iced tea. Huehuetenango is a ruggedly steep and lush department consisting almost entirely of highland valleys that benefit from temperate climates at high elevations, narrow passages and sharp peaks, a landscape with seemingly endless potential for outstanding coffees. Most of Huehuetenango’s smallholders descend from pre-Columbian civilizations and identify as Mam, Q’anjob’al, Chuj, Jakaltek, Tektik, Awakatek, Chalchitek, Akatek, and K’iche’.
Asociación Civil Maya Alternativa (COMAL), is a liberal, non-profit producer group whose governance is apolitical, religiously neutral, respectful of all thoughts, creeds, ethnicities, and cultures. The objective of the group is to support the marketing of their members’ coffee and other agricultural products, as well as provide specialized assistance in things like technical farm management, health programs, education, and food security. COMAL also is part of a regional and national alliance of grower organizations that promotes sustainable agriculture across Guatemala and abroad.
This lot is an all-bourbon lot produced and organized by members of COMAL. Combined, the association farms 12 hectares of coffee, along with fruit trees, taro, and sweet potato. COMAL member farmers harvest entirely themselves, with the help of family members; coffee is depulped and fermented on the farm in concrete tanks and washed clean with freshly drawn ground water. Drying takes place on designated patios kept clean of debris, dust, and foreign material, and occasionally the terraces of farmers’ homes. A
COMAL works with Federación Comercializadora de Café Especial de Guatemala (FECCEG) for dry milling, marketing, and exportation. FECCEG represents a number of different smallholder farmer organizations across Guatemala. Each individual group, like COMAL, who contributes finished parchment to FECCEG via their association, retains a register of their delivery to FECCEG for their own tracking and transparency purposes. They keep in touch with FECCEG throughout the milling and sample evaluation stages, and can have their coffees marketed as microlots, such as this one, if they qualify.