ORGANICO MARCALA, Honduras (Honey)

Organico Marcala comes from Marcala, in the La Paz department of Honduras, one of the country’s most highly regarded coffee-growing regions, with protected designation of origin status. This lot is produced by COMSA (Café Orgánico Marcala S.A.), a cooperative founded in 2001 by a group of small farmers who wanted to sell their coffee directly and transition from conventional to organic farming.

Today, the cooperative brings together more than 1,500 producers and operates its own wet and dry processing stations to keep each lot’s quality under control. The coffee is certified organic, which means it is grown without synthetic pesticides or chemical fertilizers.

At the heart of COMSA’s philosophy is Finca La Fortaleza, a model farm and training center where farmers learn organic techniques, soil management, and how to produce biofertilizers. The cooperative calls this “Finca Humana”: the idea that people’s well-being comes before any other objective. Some of its sales revenue is reinvested in the community, including in education through schools and scholarships.

The coffee grows at elevations between 1,200 and 1,700 meters and is a blend of four varieties, each with its own story.

Parainema was developed in the 1980s by IHCAFE, Honduras’s national coffee institute, to resist leaf rust and nematodes. A Parainema lot even won the 2017 Cup of Excellence Honduras, changing how specialists view disease-resistant varieties. Lempira was introduced in Honduras in 1998, also for its resistance to leaf rust. Icatu is a hybrid developed in Brazil, with some Robusta ancestry, while Red Catuai is a classic Brazilian variety valued for its balance in the cup.

Honey processing involves drying the bean with some of the fruit’s mucilage still on it. Sugars from the mucilage slowly make their way into the bean, so the result has the sweetness and body of a natural coffee, but with greater clarity in the cup.

Organico Marcala develops notes of berries, dried fruit, chocolate, cashews, and brown sugar, with high body, low-to-medium acidity, and high sweetness. A sweet, easy-to-love cup that’s great brewed as filter coffee, espresso, or with milk.