Honduras, Proyecto Cabañas Espresso

By way of our partners at Beneficio San Vicente, we were able to connect with the Proyecto Cabañas wet mill in La Paz, located far south of the high elevations and humid conditions of Santa Barbara, and pressed against the border with El Salvador. The producers who bring coffee to the Proyecto Cabañas wet mill own on average 2.5 hectares of land. They grow mostly Lempira, a variety popularized by the Instituto Hondureño del Café (IHCAFE) in an effort to battle coffee leaf rust, a disease which ravaged farms in the early 2010s. Though it has now been determined that Lempira is susceptible to rust, many of these producers had already replaced their Pacas and Typica plants with Lempira. Experimenting with processing methods has helped raise the value of their cherry and expand the markets to which they’re selling.