Source Analysis by Charlie Habegger
Finca La Senda is a longstanding farm with recent new ownership. The cherry produced here was delivered to local cooperatives until 2017, when it was taken over by Arnoldo Pérez Meléndez and María Eugenia Escobar, who established the farm’s first wet mill and started processing microlots. At first the goal was to maximize the farm’s high-elevation Acatenango terroir—already well known for its lush balance and brightly articulated aromatics.
Over time, as processing techniques evolved worldwide, so did those at La Senda. Now, nine years into its progression, we have coffees that derive from the terroir but go way beyond it, like this one: a long, anaerobic cherry fermentation stabilized with Saccharomyces bayanus yeast, and then slowly dried as a natural on raised screen beds for nearly a month.
As you would expect, such a coffee exudes the flavors of its processing environment, and this one is dominated by cured coffee cherry and a tangy, lactic-sweet wine. It is also crisp, herbaceous, jammy, pine-like, and sparkling. The cup is intense; a little less restrained and a little wilder than the anaerobics we typically select for the Crown, but wonderfully so.
Most of Guatemala’s growing regions are not named for administrative departments but for terroirs. Most of these are marked by mountain ranges and other geological landmarks instead of political borders. Acatenango, one of Guatemala’s most respected coffee areas is similarly not a department but a rural patchwork of communities that span a short highlands area between the massive 13,000ft Acatenango stratovolcano and the eastern shore of Lake Atitlán, in the lower region of Guatemala’s Chimaltenango department. The Antigua valley, Guatemala’s most established and oldest top selling terroir, sits just on the other side of the Acatenango volcano.
In specialty coffee, the Acatenango region was one of Guatemala’s first to earn premium status with American roasters, along with southern Huehuetenango, because of its exceptional quality potential—the region is highly volcanic, receives cooling Pacific Ocean winds, and has growing elevations up to 2,000 meters. In the early aughts the region became known for ambitious family-run estates who were eager to enter early Cup of Excellence competitions and promote their coffees directly to roasters, rather than exporters or brokers, when this was still very rare to do. It is still where some of the country’s most innovative coffees are regularly produced.
“Petite Champagne” Processing at La Senda
It must be said: as coffee buyers we are increasingly grateful to producers for simplifying their complicated processes with a simple brand name. Anything we could come up with wouldn’t be nearly as endearing as “petite champagne”. However; as green coffee sellers we are compelled to break it all down, not to challenge the fun of it, but to really help explain the value of the work involved. (Also, when producers like Arnoldo and María supply as much detail as they have, we can’t leave it out.)
La Senda’s processing for this microlot started with Brix refractometer readings in the field to ensure an exact level of ripeness for all cherry involved. Harvested cherry was taken immediately to stainless steel tanks, where it was sealed inside along with saccharomyces bayanus yeast, a strain cultivated for its ability to digest high quantities of sugars and remain stable under higher pressures (thus the “champagne” in the title). In short, it is a vigorous but predictable anaerobic fermentation environment. Batches for this microlot fermented thus for 72-100 hours each, with María carefully monitoring the tanks to prevent the development of acetic acid, ensuring the final coffee remained sweet and expressive. Once complete, the fermented cherry was rinsed and moved to raised screen beds under full shade to dry, slowly and gradually, for 20-30 days per batch.
