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. An estimated 70% of Huehuetenango’s inhabitants are indigenous to the region, and smallholder coffee farmers in this department identify, among others, as Mam, Q’anjob’al, Chuj, Jakaltek, Tektik, Awakatek, Chalchitek, Akatek, and K’iche’. The Huehuetenango department also has a modern history of estate coffee excellence, with large 100+ hectare properties that are award-winning in the specialty world and whose success provides centers of stable income for their greater communities. “Tres Marias” is an estate blend from southern Huehuetenango curated and exported by CAMEC S.A., based in both Guatemala City and with a historic wet mill in Antigua. CAMEC is one of Royal’s oldest export partners anywhere in the world—we have been buying coffee from them since the early 1980s. Originally 3 estates, “Tres Marias” has evolved to be an annual blend of any number of estates exported by CAMEC, whose profiles mix wonderfully together into what CAMEC’s quality team believes is an excellent, affordable representation of Huehuetenango estate coffee. Coffee estates in the southern municipalities of Huehuetenango tend to be hand-picked, centrally processed in large estate wet mills, and patio-dried. Elevations here are high and the climate during harvest is usually quite dry, creating the perfect conditions for dense coffees that are well-cured for transport and a long shelf life.
