Finca El Carmen • Guatemala

This is our second year purchasing coffee from Maria Ines Leal and Daniel Skinner-Klee and Rueda Farms. We are grateful to Osito Coffee for importing this coffee on our behalf.

We were introduced to Maria and Daniel by our good friend and wholesale client, Derek Davis from Cafe Conmigo! We’ve been working with Maria and Daniel since 2024 and have been very impressed with their quality, consistency, and willingness to work with us on a handful of different projects; from fine robustas that are used in our Heartmender Blend, to large volumes of coffee from Finca Concepcion for our Morning Blend, and now high-end microlots like this coffee.

There were 4 total pickings at Finca El Carmen that went into the production of this lot, with all 4 being processed identically. Freshly picked cherries were delivered to the mill (located on the farm) where they were floated in water. Floating is done to separate cherries that are less dense to improve the overall quality of a lot of coffee (cherries float due to irregularities during growing, such as: under ripe cherries, insect damage, empty fruit, etc.). The cherries were then anaerobically fermented for 18-20 days; afterwards, the cherries were removed from the barrels and depulped. The depulped coffee was then placed back in the fermentation barrels with the ‘mosto’ (the sugary liquid “sweated out” by the cherries during the initial fermentation) for 3 days. After this, the coffee was taken to shaded greenhouses where it was dried on raised beds for 14 days.

We selected this coffee to further highlight the amazing work being done by Maria, Daniel, and their team at Rueda Farms. Our relationship with them has blossomed into something very special and we are incredibly grateful and excited for the opportunity to grow with them. This coffee is quite expressive with crisp, white wine-like acidity, an earthy sweetness akin to nutmeg or milk chocolate, and assorted fruitiness ranging from lemon to blueberry to faint tropicals.