Antonio Medina – Espresso
$22–$78
Antonio Medina – Espresso
$22–$78
-
-
- Producer Antonio Medina
- Attributes Caturra & Bourbon
- Origin Finca La Colina, Martin Jilotepeque, Chimaltenango
- Flavours Balanced and sweet, with notes of stewed pear, honey and roasted hazelnut.
The producer is someone we’ve been buying from for 4 or so years – Antonio Medina. His coffee is generally caturra and borbon and most often released as an espresso roast, so we’re super stoked to be able to make a filter release this time.
FARM MANAGEMENT
Just one quarter of Antonio’s property is planted with coffee- the rest is native forest, protected by Antonio and monitored by the government who support Antonio financially to protect native flora and fauna. Similarly, the water Antonio uses for processing comes from the farm and is protected. The forest on his farm is certified by the National Institution of Protection of Forests (INAB). He farms 64 manzanas of coffee: half in Caturra, half in Borbon, much of the latter is currently re-growing after pruning. In 2019, he planted 5,000 Gesha plants, and his Pacamara plants are now beginning to produce good fruit.He has planted many native leguminous shade trees, called Chalum, while also managing shade with pine and cedar trees as well. He prunes his shade trees only during the full moon, when plant fluids are concentrated in lower plant parts and roots, meaning that the pruning cuts to retard growth are more effective. His soils have large rocks and boulders which protect from erosion, and his farm is home to lots of native squirrels, rabbits and snakes.Antonio is a fourth generation grower, twenty years in himself. He has always just sold cherry, like the vast majority of Guatemala’s small producers, and just five years ago started drying his coffee to sell parchment at differentiated prices. He has five daughters, and he is able to put them all through university thanks to selling specialty coffee. Selling parchment at differentiated prices has allowed Antonio to give his daughters opportunities he never had himself. Antonio is hoping to be able to purchase a guardiola- a mechanical dryer- for more even drying, and to be less dependent upon weather and patio space. Antonio has given the upper part of his farm to members of the local indigenous community who work on his farm.PROCESSING
Antonio has been processing specialty coffee for several years now, placing several times in the Cup of Excellence; in 2015 he placed 8th. Traditional tank fermentation takes around 36 hours, followed by traditional patio drying over eight to twelve days. To reduce the amount of water used, Antonio has a demucilager to mechanically wash the fermented coffee. An ecologically-minded farmer, Antonio fertilizes with top-grade and highly efficient inputs to be able to apply less frequently and in less volume, he decomposes and composts coffee pulp before applying it back to the farm as organic fertilizer, practices manual weeding and sprays just twice a year for Roya with the most non-toxic product on the market.SOURCING
We were introduced to Antonio through his brother-in-law, the head of one of the small associations in Huehuetenango we work with. We’re in contact via WhatsApp regularly, coordinating logistics, planning towards next year’s harvest, and negotiating prices directly with him. This is the first year that Antonio’s pacamara harvest has been large enough to process separately, and we bought it in its entirety- two bags of green. Pacamara is a cross between the Maragogype variety (from Typica), which produces extremely large beans- and Pacas (a short-growing tree from Bourbon). Pacamara trees are compact in stature, but the beans are huge, and known for their high cup quality (and are notoriously challenging to roast). We paid 1,500 quetzales per quintal (100 pounds of parchment) for Antonio’s pacamara lot. Antonio then delivered the coffee to our chosen mill, to whom we pay milling and export fees separately.
-