About This Coffee
Jobneel Caceres grew up farming coffee with his father. When he was younger, he and his father migrated to work in neighboring countries. In 2008, he returned with the money he saved and bought an extension of their farm, Finca El Cielito to produce more coffee.
Today, Jobneel and his wife, Fanny Moreno, produce coffee together, with Jobneel overseeing the farm and Fanny focusing on processing and drying harvested cherry.
When some friends encouraged him to enter his coffee into the Cup of Excellence competition, Jobneel thought he’d give it a try and he was enthusiastic to win second place that year. This early win motivated him to keep investing in his coffee and processing to continue producing high quality coffees.
Cultivation
In 2020, Jobneel planted his first shade trees to help improve soil fertility and coffee quality. Each year, he invests in more shade trees and works on introducing new varieties.
Finca El Cielito is close to Lake Yojoa and the forests of Santa Barbara Mountain.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
Jobneel selectively handpicks ripe, red cherry and delivers it to Fanny for processing. Fanny pulps cherry and places it in concrete tanks to ferment for 20 hours. Following fermentation, Fanny washed parchment in clean water and lays it in parabolic solar dryers to sundry. She rakes parchment frequently to ensure even drying. It takes approximately 18 to 24 days for parchment to dry.
About Pacas
Pacas is named for the farm where the variety was first discovered. The Pacas family in the Santa Ana region of El Salvador identified Pacas, a natural mutation of Bourbon, in 1949. The Salvadoran Institute for Coffee Research (ISIC) further selected for Pacas in the 1960s. Like Caturra and Villa Sarchi, Pacas has a single-gene mutation that causes smaller plant size. Smaller-sized trees enable producers to place trees closer together and increase potential yields. The Pacas variety is widely grown in El Salvador, where it accounts for approximately 25% of total coffee production, and in Honduras, where IHCAFE introduced the variety in 1974.
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.