Apple Juice & Swiss Milk Chocolate
Jorge Vides, patriarch of the Vides family, purchased his first coffee farm, Finca La Bolsa, in 1958. Jorge was the kind of man who poured his heart into everything he did. In addition to cultivating coffee, Jorge also worked full time as a physician. In the beginning, he saw patients Mondays through Fridays and worked on the farm during all other hours. He later became director of the National Hospital of Huehuetenango, which still bears his name today.
In addition to producing coffee and saving lives through medicine, Jorge founded a school on the farm in 1980. The school, authorized by the National Ministry for Education, is still educating young people in the community today.
In 2001, Jorge and his children and grandchildren decided to transition the farm towards entirely growing specialty coffee. In 2002, coffee from Vides won 2nd place in the Guatemalan Cup of Excellence.
Vides also established a joint program with Association Coffee Care, an organization dedicated to reducing instances of child labor by offering educational and recreational programs to children aged 2 to 14.
Today, Vides is as family-owned as ever. They managed several farms, including Finca La Bolsa, Finca Terrazas and Finca El Sarral.
The unique microclimate of Huehuetenango is created by hot air sweeping in from Mexico and cool air travelling down the Cuchumantanes Mountains, keeping frost at bay in the high altitude and allowing for coffee crops to be grown at upward of 2000masl. The result is high quality cups with sparkling acidity and delicate fruit flavours.
The varieties in this years Finca Terrazas offering are San Ramon and Caturra, both dwarf mutations of the well-known Bourbon coffee variety. As well as being delicious, high quality dwarf varieties like these are desirable for their ability to be planted close together in high density crops, maximizing output.
Coffee cherries at Finca Terrazas are hand-picked at their ripest and delivered to the wet-mill at neighbouring Finca La Bolsa where they are pulped and dry fermented for 60 hours before washing. It then takes 10-12 days for beans to fully dry through a combination of traditional sun drying on patios and mechanical drying.
COUNTRY: Guatemala
SUB REGION, REGION: La Libertad, Huehuetenango
FARM NAME / WET MILL: Finca Terrazas
PRODUCER: Vides Family
VARIETY / CULTIVAR: San Ramon, Caturra
PROCESSING & FERMENTATION: Washed process
MASL: 1750 - 2100