Guatemala Rosa Santa Barbara

We’re absolutely buzzing to share this delightful and complex coffee, Guatemala Rosa Santa Barbara micro-lot with you—it’s like a sip of Guatemala in every cup! Experience the savoring rich notes of chocolate, a splash of sweet citrus, with an herbal finish of lemongrass.

This coffee is a labor of love from Woman Producer Rosa Rosenda Rivera, who’s been at the helm of her family’s farm for 20 years. The story goes back even further—50 years, to be exact—when her father began farming corn and beans at Finca Santa Barbara. But as time went on, they found those crops just didn’t cut it. So, like many in their community, they made the bold decision to switch gears and dive into coffee farming. It all started with a few seeds in the sun-kissed terraces of Chicol and Tojcail. And as they saw the fruits of their labor with the boost in their income, they expanded to the cooler areas. The rest, as they say, is delicious history!

Microclimate: Santa Barbara, Huehuetenango is famous for its sky-high altitudes and steady weather, making it a paradise for growing coffee with that signature sparkling acidity and unique fruit flavors we all love. The region's microclimate is one-of-a-kind, thanks to a little dance between warm air flowing in from the Plains of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, Mexico, and cool breezes rolling down from the Cuchumatanes Mountains. This playful mix of hot and cold keeps the frost at bay and lets coffee thrive at impressive heights of 1800-2000 meters above sea level.

Due to its remoteness in one of Guatemala’s three non-volcanic regions, most producers in Huehuetenango process their own coffee. Luckily, an abundance of streams and rivers in the region make fully washed coffees easier to process. Farmers selectively hand pick coffee cherries and pulp it on their farms, typically using small hand-powered or electric drum pulpers. After fermenting, parchment is agitated to remove remaining mucilage, and washed with clean water. All water used during pulping and washing is filtered so that organic solids do not contaminate local waterways. Typically, farmers lay parchment to dry on raised beds that are stacked on top of each other to maximize space.

About Guatemalan Coffee: Guatemala boasts a variety of growing regions and conditions that produce spectacular coffees. Today, the country is revered as a producer of some of the most flavorful and nuanced cups worldwide. We are proud to work with several exceptional in-country partners to bring these coffees to market. The quality of coffee produced in Guatemala is increasing, overall, due to the diversity of the industry’s producers.

Cooperatives in Guatemala: Cooperatives are becoming more appealing to many smallholder farmers because they often offer farmers financing and other support for improving their farming and processing, and are often able to offer higher prices for the coffee cherry than middlemen. Many cooperatives have initiated quality improvement training for farmer members and are becoming more adept at helping members market their coffee as specialty.

History of Guatemalan Coffee

Although coffee was brought over from the Caribbean in the mid-18th century by Jesuit priests, it was used primarily as an ornamental plant and garden crop for 100 years in Guatemala. Coffee wasn’t widely traded, however, until commercial production began in the 1850s. The volcanic soil and various micro-climates proved ideal for growing coffee in Guatemala. Coffee, within a generation, became the country’s most important crop. In 1860, Guatemala exported 140,000 pounds of coffee, and just 25 years later, the country was exporting over 40 million pounds. Large numbers of coffee farmers were German immigrants responsible for many inventions and innovations related to coffee milling. Most of Guatemala’s coffee was exported to Germany until the First World War, when exports shifted to the United States.