El Encanto Antigua FW

When Don Juventino Mirón first owned Finca El Encanto, he thought about cutting down the native trees that covered the land. Today, he tells his children stories about how he almost cut down the trees, never imagining the potential beauty of the farm as it looks today.

In addition to being breathtakingly beautiful, the forest provides ecosystem services, including habitat for local wildlife, filtering water sources, preventing erosion and more, for the surrounding region.

Today, three generations of the family live and work on Finca El Encanto. Don Juventino finds great pleasure in teaching coffee-growing techniques to the second and third generations of his family.

The area around Fraijanes, in Guatemala's famed Antigua region, is rugged and mountainous and covered with old-growth forests. The region was hard hit by coffee leaf rust (CLR) and approximately 60% of cultivated land at Finca El Encanto was infected with CLR during the peak of the outbreak from 2014 to 2016. A nursery on the farm is currently cultivating 60,000 coffee seedlings—Catuai and other CLR-resistant varieties—to replace part of the land affect by CLR.

Antigua has historically been Guatemala’s best-known coffee-growing region. The climate and land are perfect for coffee cultivation. The soil is volcanic with frequent eruptions from the nearby Volan Fuego adding a dust of mineral ash from time to time. Humidity is relatively low but constant. Finally, the region gets lots of sun year-round but has those cool nights that assist slow cherry development and are so important to specialty coffee. 

Antiguan growers can sometimes fetch high prices due to the fame of the region's coffee. Nonetheless, more and more farms have found it difficult to continue farming, particularly when land in the region is at a premium. Antigua lies not far from the capital city of Guatemala, making it particularly attractive for second homes or even for commuters. Many farms have diminished greatly in size over the last two decades or disappeared altogether, eaten away by golf courses and housing developments.  Nonetheless, Antigua persists and still produces exquisite coffees along with great blend components.

Strictly High Grown (SHG) specifies the altitude at which the coffee was grown. A coffee must be grown at 1,200 meters above sea level or higher to be considered SHG. The higher altitude and lower temperatures mean that the coffee fruit matures more slowly, creating a denser bean.  

EP stands for European Preparation. EP beans are Screen 15+ with a low defect tolerance.