About This Coffee
Siblings Anabella and Antonio Meneses are the fourth generation of Meneses to own and manage Santa Felisa Estate. The estate was founded in 1902 and today, it’s the perfect blend of age-old know-how and modern coffee artisanship. While continually improving their typical processing methods, Anabella and Antonio are also constantly experimenting with new processing methods to find new flavors.
Cultivation
The conditions in the Acatenango Valley make coffee cultivation so fruitful. Breezes from the Sierra Madre Mountains that cool the mornings are followed by warm, sunny days. By the afternoon, fresh winds coming off the Pacific Ocean create the cool nights that cause cherry to concentrate sugars for dense, sweet beans.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
After selective handpicking, ripe cherry is fermented in an oxygen-less environment for 12 hours. Then, fermented cherry is pulped and laid to dry on raised beds. Workers rake drying coffee frequently to ensure consistent drying. It takes approximately 10 days for coffee to dry.
Coffee in Guatemala
Guatemala boasts a variety of growing regions and conditions that produce spectacular coffees. Today, the country is revered as a producer of some of the most flavorful and nuanced cups worldwide. We are proud to work with several exceptional in-country partners to bring these coffees to market.
The Guatemalan coffee industry experienced a major setback with the 2010 appearance of Coffee Leaf Rust (CLR) in Latin America. The epidemic peaked in severity in 2012, and though CLR continues to affect some farms, Guatemala continues to produce high-quality, record-breaking coffees. In 2017, new and varied processing methods pushed prices at the Guatemalan Cup of Excellence contest to record highs.
The quality of coffee being produced in Guatemala is increasing, overall, due to the diversity of the industry’s producers. There are more and more small holder farmers producing exceptional coffee at high altitudes. Cooperatives are becoming more appealing to so many smallholders because they often offer farmers financing and other support for improving their farming and processing and are frequently able to offer higher prices for cherry than middlemen. Many cooperatives have initiated quality improvement training for farmer members and are becoming more adept at helping members market their coffee as specialty.