Juan Vargas, Guatemala

Juan lives with his wife and children in the small town of Canlaj, where he and his family do most of the farm work. He bought the farm by working as a laborer, saving his earnings, and investing in land piece by piece over the years. He and his family have realized that selling high quality coffee is more profitable than selling commercial coffee, so they focus on quality coffee production. Juan’s wife and kids take leadership roles in the processing of this coffee. The coffee is picked at peak freshness and the cherries moved to the depulper. As the coffee is depulped, defects are sorted out carefully before the coffee is placed in a container to ferment. As with the other micro lots we’ve been receiving from the La Paya producers of Santos Pablo and Alberto Pablo, Juan Vargas adds a secondary, post-fermentation soaking stage, as is common in Kenya. Not only do we find this keeps the coffee incredibly clean, but the coffees that undergo this stage tend to age better.