Honduras Serendipia

Where in the world?

REGION

Chinacla, La Paz

FARM

COMSA Co-Op

ALTITUDE

1500 MASL

VARIETY

Catuai, Bourbon, Lempira

PROCESS

Washed

TASTING NOTES

Milk Chocolate, Pineapple Cubes, Walnut

What’s the story?

Ten years ago, Suita Díaz Nolasco walked into the roastery with a travel bag full of samples from COMSA, the pioneering organic co-op in Marcala, Honduras. “Just try the coffee,” she said, with a twinkle. So we did, and we’ve bought it every year since!

Ten years on, it’s still a cracker.

Expect milk chocolate, caramel and walnut, with a lovely brown-sugar sweetness running all the way through, and a smoky-sweet flash of barbecued pineapple. The acidity has fantastic depth. It’s juicy and layered, and it keeps pulling you back for another sip.

As espresso it’s a gem, and it makes a stunning long black. Add milk and it changes completely, as red grapes and tropical fruit balance beautifully with that chocolatey base. Keep the milk modest, no more than 5–6oz on a big double, and you’ll get the very best of it.

Serendipia is a washed coop lot, blended from many COMSA farmers in the hills around Marcala. It reaches us through Suita’s importer collective, Casa Spiral. We named it for the magic that happens when great growers and a couple of flavour-obsessed roasters find each other.

COMSA’s story starts in 2001, when 60 local producers pooled about 7,000 lempiras, roughly US$300, to start a co-op. Their big idea was the Finca Humana: growing people as carefully as coffee. Before you cultivate the land, you cultivate the minds, hands and conscience of the people who work it.

Just as a farm starts with seed and nursery, it all starts with the children. That thinking runs through everything COMSA does. At Finca La Fortaleza, their biodynamic demonstration farm, farmers teach farmers. They share composting, native mountain microbes and organic know-how in week-long gatherings they call Pata de Chucho.

Twenty-five years on, COMSA has grown to around 1,500 member families, most of them Indigenous Lenca, and has become one of the most respected organic co-ops in the world. It holds Organic, Fairtrade, SPP and Bird Friendly certifications, and it helped create Café Marcala, the first coffee Denomination of Origin in Honduras and in Central America.

Earlier this year, Café Marcala and COMSA shipped the region’s first fully traceable, deforestation-free container to Europe.

Coffee money helps fund COMSA International School, and Casa Spiral’s buyers, us included, have been helping build a multipurpose court there, one harvest at a time. First came the concrete court, then a safety wall, then bleachers and a terrace. A roof is next. Today the court hosts PE lessons, outdoor maths and Spanish, science fairs, the Fiesta Catracha and an annual Art Festival.

So every bag of Serendipia you brew helps a few more young minds grow.

ESPRESSO:

Dose: 19g
Yield: 35ml out
Time: 30 seconds

FILTER: French Press

Dose: 35g
Yield: 500ml
Time: 4:30