Honduras Geovany Rivera

Santa Barbara | Pacas | 1700 masl | Washed

Fruited and bright, this washed lot from Santa Barbara layers rosehip and kumquat over deep toffee sweetness.

Geovany Rivera grew up working coffee with his father in Santa Barbara. In 2007, the year he married, he bought his first farm, already planted to Pacas, built a house on it, and started selling into the conventional market. The turning point came in 2012, when Natividad Benitez, the 2006 Cup of Excellence champion, sold him a hectare in the village of El Ocotillo at a price he could manage. Geovany planted it to Pacas and by 2015 was producing his first specialty microlots, borrowing a neighbor’s wet mill and dryer since he had neither. Careful saving of those early specialty earnings paid for his own wet mill and solar dryer within a few years. Today El Bordo covers a hectare and a half at 1700 meters, and his attention has turned to dialing in fertilization and disease management. Cherries are picked and depulped each afternoon, dry fermented, rinsed five times, sieved for floaters and immature seeds, and dried in a parabolic solar dryer for around 16 days before heading to the San Vicente mill.