About This Coffee
Finca Medina is involved in a number of social projects to help enrich the lives of their workers. One of the programs includes education to workers on safety, hygiene and healthcare and environmental care. Finca Medina also offers scholarships for tuition and school supplies for employees and their children. They offer an annual oral hygiene check-up for workers and family members. There are also opportunities for community sports, housing for many of the workers and more.
Cultivation
Coffee trees at Finca Medina grow under shade with approximately 320 shade trees per hectare. The density of shade trees also helps reduce the growth of weeds. Trees are fertilized with composted cherry pulp and pests are controlled with traps and with other practices such as picking up fallen cherry after harvest time.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Harvest runs from November to April. Cherry is handpicked while a Brix scale analysis is used to determine optimal maturation point for cherries. The same day that cherries are harvested, they are pulped and fermented. After fermentation, they are cleaned and traditional washing and density sorting practices are used to classify and separate the best beans. The beans are then dried on a patio in direct sunlight. Throughout the drying process, the beans are turned with wooden paddles to ensure even drying.
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.