The Sagastume family has been farming coffee for many decades, headed by Don Pedro Sagastume. Now, as Pedro grows older, he has divided his farms in multiple plots for his sons to take ownership and leadership in their own work. Nevertheless, this is a family effort, all the wet processing and drying happens centrally around the family home, with the sons and their families living only a stone’s throw away.
This Pacas comes from a plot on the ¨Los Quetzales¨ farm, managed by Pedro himself. This farm is aptly named for the common sighting of the very rare Quetzal bird. With very cool nights and warm days, this 1600 masl farm has the perfect microclimate to produce complex and bright coffees, characteristic of the Santa Barbara region.
The family has worked tirelessly to obtain their spot in the specialty coffee market through research, investing in the right infrastructure, and the development of new plots. The highlights of these investments are the expansion of the solar dryers as well as plots planted with Gesha, Pacamara and SL28 varieties, which will produce for the first time in the 2021 harvest.
This lot of Pacas coffee underwent Washed processing at the family’s wet mill. Cherries are pulped as soon as they arrive at the mill, only 30 minutes travel from the fields. The pulped coffee is dry fermented in ceramic-tiled tanks for 16–24 hours with all of the mucilage left intact. The fermented coffee is washed with fresh spring water, leaving some of the mucilage still on the parchment. This washed coffee is finally dried on raised beds in a solar dryer for 14 days.
Region: Santa Barbara
The Honduran Department of Santa Barbara is one of the country’s 18 departments. It stretches from the border with Guatemala into the central mountain highlands. The Reserva de Vida Silvestre Montaña Verde wild animal preserve and the Santa Barbara Mountain are two of the main natural features of the department.
To the east of the Santa Barbara mountain, covered in primary rainforest filled with rich biodiversity, the shores of Lake Yojoa form part of the department’s borders. This region of Honduras is rich with smallholder agricultural production and far removed from the sprawling cities of San Pedro Sula to the north and the capital Tegucigalpa to the southeast.
The verdant mountains of Santa Barabara are part of three of Honduras’ coffee growing regions: Copan, Opalaca, and Montecillos. Temperatures range from 12-22 degrees Celsius throughout the year and shade trees over coffee include fruit trees, such as guava, and forest hardwoods, such as pine.
