El Volcancito

Impressions: dark chocolate, butter, almonds, candied orange
Roast Degree: medium-dark (4/5)
Country: Guatemala
Location: El Volcancito, Santa Rosa
Producers: Amildo Pineda, Rigoberto Garcia, Rommel Urias and Miguel Angel Quinteros
Varieties: Mixed, mostly Pache San Ramon
Process: Washed
Import Partner: Semilla

El Volcancito is a small Xinka Community that is almost entirely reliant on coffee to earn a living. They are relatively new to the specialty coffee sector, starting to export internationally in 2022. This is also when we started to use this lot as our staple and biggest volume buy every year.

Instead of chasing cup scores or cheaper prices, we are committed to buy as much as we can from this group every harvest with the end goal being able to buy all they have to offer. By buying this coffee (and any other coffees or blends from the region) you help us get closer to that goal.

You can also find the El Volcancito blend in our Chocolate Berry Blend as well as in our half caf option, The Mindful Blend .

Many growers in the region still sell their coffee cherries locally for a fraction of what they could get from the specialty sector. Every harvest, Semilla tries to gather momentum from buyers so they can incorporate more producers into their network and give them crucial access to a more lucrative market.

One of the key reasons for the group's success has been how they organized locally to process their own cherries in communal beneficios. Each producer contributing to this lot is a true smallholder farmer, producing between 5 and 15 bags of exportable coffee annually. Coming together to build a high-quality community lot makes processing and exporting more efficient, leaving more money in their pockets compared to processing everything individually.