About This Coffee
Finca el Alto has been in coffee growing for four generations, starting in 1965 with Jose Aguilar, followed by Jose Daniel Aguilar, who inherited El Alto in 1978. Ludwin Daniel Aguilar began to work at the farm with his father, Jose Daniel, in 1992. Now the fourth generation are the children of Ludwin Aguilar.
Since 1985 Finca El Alto has been one of the pioneers in installing a traditional mill and running channels to obtain good quality coffee.
Starting in 1992, Ludwin, the current administrator of the farm, is fully dedicated to continuing to improve every day to ensure quality and a source of income for his family.
El Alto is located in Sile San Francisco, close to Cerro Grande in the Municipality of La Labor Ocotepeque, Honduras.
Cultivation
The pickers are hired and trained to cut only cherry ripe; then, the coffee is pulped and processed at their mill and then transported to patios and African dryers, where it's slowly dried in the sun to ensure quality.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
The by-products generated during the wet process (mucilage and pulp) are treated and processed for use as organic fertilizers and nutrient-rich foliar sprays.
Sustainable Harvest
Sustainable Harvest® is a specialty coffee trader focusing primarily on bringing coffees to market that are sourced from smallholder farmer cooperatives in the supply chain such as indigenous communities, women groups and the next generation of coffee farmers.
Their sourcing model is built on transparency, traceability and direct relationships between quality-minded coffee roasters and best-in-class coffee producers. Sustainable Harvest® has an on-site presence at origin with staff in Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Peru. Each office coordinates their supply including quality management, supplier relationships, source development, logistics, training and capacity building.
Coffee in Honduras
Honduras is a small yet mighty coffee producer. The country boasts the largest per capita coffee production in the world. Beginning in 2017, Honduras began placing in third place for Arabica production volume globally. For this slot, they compete with Ethiopia—a country 10 times larger than Honduras. The two countries trade between third and fourth place annually, but the achievement is impressive, nonetheless.
Honduras has everything it needs to become a premier specialty coffee producer. The country has the right growing conditions, abundant fertile soils and soaring altitudes (nearly all farms are at more than 1,000 meters above sea level), plus a variety of microclimates.
Beginning in the early 2000s the industry began to focus on quality. Improved infrastructure (better mechanical dryers, centralized wet mills, an increasing number of solar dryers), quality control/assurance trainings (separating lots by qualities, cupping schools, etc.), the rise of specialty-focused exporters, increased volumes of certified coffees and the strengthening cooperative movement all have worked in tandem to make Honduran coffee ‘one to watch’.
It is only in more recent years that coffee production in Honduras has reached specialty levels comparable to other Central American countries, but specialty roasters are responding with enthusiasm. In 2017, a lot in the Cup of Excellence garnered the highest price ever paid for a Cup of Excellence coffee in any country: $124.50 per pound (approximately $56.50 per kg).
Above all, while Honduras increasingly offers high end microlots, what the country arguably represents overall is exceptional value. Quality has improved massively over the last 15 years, and in addition to unique specialty lots, the country offers very solid, clean blenders at very attractive prices.