MASL - 1100 - 1400
Usual processing methods - Washed, Natural, Honey

This coffee is one of the few that we buy from a single farm. Luis Ordonez has worked his land for over 25 years, cultivating more than a dozen varietals and focusing on exceptional quality. Luis originally planned to expand his coffee farm from 26 hectares to 40, however over time his plans have changed. Familiar with the exploitation of farmers by large, domestic coffee buyers, Luis now plans to open a centralised wet mill. He wants to support his neighbouring farmers by buying cherry from smallholders on both sides of the Mexico-Guatemala border. Luis's plan is to stabilise local farmers' income, encourage and support them to continue growing quality coffee and invest in his community.

We buy this coffee via the importer Osito. There is a lot of information about the speciality coffee industry in Mexico on their website, you can find out more here.

In short, there are a lot of barriers for Mexican, particularly indigenous Mexican, farmers to overcome. Working in remote regions infrastructure is patchy at best, there are many indigenous languages spoken, with Spanish often being a second language so communication can be difficult. The lot sizes can be tiny, in agricultural terms, so output of coffee from individual smallholders is low. Working together in cooperatives or common washing stations is necessary however with poor infrastructure and barriers to communication, this is difficult to establish.

By choosing to buy from smallholders and smaller family farms producing high quality speciality coffee, we're all helping to build this sector in Mexico.