Finca Fatima is a 90-hectare estate in the lush highland area of Santa Rosa, part of Guatemala’s extensive Fraijanes region. Fatima’s coffee, washed and dried on traditional patios, is soft and creamy in the cup with complex brown sugars and hints of citrus oil and tropical fruit. This is a well-produced, reliably sweet coffee with an earlier availability than other regions in Guatemala with more challenging climates. The Fraijanes Plateau Guatemala’s Fraijanes plateau is a lateral stretch of humid and high-elevation territory heavily influenced by the Pacaya volcano, Guatemala’s most active by far. Fraijanes as a whole is full of microclimates and dense, lush ridges with lots of cloud cover. The region is not named for a national department like Huehuetenango, but a geographical denomination recognized for its unique coffee terroir (similar to Antigua, Lake Atitlán, or Cobán). Fraijanes extends from the Pacaya volcano east and south across the Guatemala and Santa Rosa departments and into the Jutiapa and Jalapa departments. Finca Fatima Originally, the parcel that is now Finca Fatima was used for cattle grazing, cornfields, and forest plantations for lumber. The land has belonged to Antonio Ibañez for 40 years but wasn’t planted with coffee until 1998. Antonio is a first-generation farmer who dreamed of producing coffee from a very young age. Now, after 27 years of doing so, says that coffee has taught him commitment and given him the opportunity to meet amazing people, which he deeply values. Coming from a livestock background it wasn’t easy transforming his property to a coffee farm. The property is steep, craggy, and full of natural canopy. By this point the land is now an efficient, profitable estate that is interwoven with its natural environment. The management team includes his wife and daughters as well. Washed Coffee Processing at Finca Fatima Finca Fatima relies on a large picking team throughout the harvest for cherry retrieval. The farm, spanning a wide altitude range and many contours, requires a constantly shifting harvest effort in order to get the cherry off the trees at peak ripeness. Cherry harvesting typically takes 5 full months. Washed coffee is delivered in cherry each afternoon to the central patios, where it is depulped and fermented overnight. The following morning the coffee is washed clean and moved to the farms large patios to sun dry, where it is raked and rotated continuously to avoid any encroaching moisture from the cloudy climate.
