El Calagual Natural
Hibiscus tea, ripe plum and dark chocolate, with a mousse-like texture and sweet aftertaste. Rich and syrupy.
This very special micro-lot comes from a tiny 4.5-hectare farm located near the village of Concepción Zacuapa in Guatemala’s Santa Rosa department. It was produced by Darwin Estuardo Fabian Estrada.
Darwin is a fifth-generation coffee producer. His family’s history in coffee dates back to 1899 when his family moved to Santa Rosa de Lima and established a large 154-hectare farm called Finca El Chicón. Bonifacio Fabian, Darwin’s father, inherited a small piece of this farm called El Calagual, named after the abundant native trees in the area.
For many years Bonifacio sold his coffee as cherry to local markets at commercial prices. However, his son saw the potential in the farm after he began studying agronomy at university, specialising in coffee production. Darwin realised very quickly that his family’s farm had all of the right conditions to produce exceptional coffee, with the right varieties planted, high elevation and unique microclimate. After much badgering, he convinced his father to let him try to harvest and process some coffee as part of his thesis. The cup results were excellent, which helped Darwin to convince his father on the potential of the farm.
Darwin is now managing the farm and experimenting with processes and varieties in order to maximise the farm’s quality potential. Given the incredibly low prices in the commodity market, Darwin recognises that having superior quality will allow him to access much better prices for the coffee and secure a more sustainable future for his family’s farm. When he is not at El Calagual, Darwin works at Prisma, one of our export partners in Guatemala. There he manages the lab and works in the QC program, giving him amazing skills to be able to taste and evaluate his coffees alongside other exceptional coffees in Guatemala.
Since taking over farm operations, Darwin has performed many small and very focused experiments on the farm, which have led to increased yields and exceptional quality. In 2019 Darwin built African drying beds to process naturals, and his next step will be to invest in a pulper to enable him to process honey and fully washed coffees. He is also experimenting with a lot of new varieties on the farm, with around 30 varieties currently in his nursery that he is planning to plant in the coming years.
This is the fifth year in a row that Darwin has sold his coffee to us (we first purchased it in 2019) and once again, we fell in love with it on the table. When we first began sourcing coffee from El Calagual, his total production was just fifteen bags—this year, Darwin has been able to produce 100 bags of specialty-grade coffee!
ABOUT SANTA ROSA
Though the Santa Rosa department is technically not one of ANACAFE’s official coffee-growing origins, it has become one of the country’s most recognised regions. Farms in Santa Rosa are spread out across the expanse of the department – meaning climatic conditions vary drastically from one estate to another, resulting in a multitude of unique cup profiles.
The region is known for producing much of the country’s commercial-grade coffee, but the range of micro-climates and rich, volcanic soils found in Santa Rosa offer great potential for specialty-grade coffee production. This is evident from the 2022 Cup of Excellence results, when 5 coffees from Santa Rosa were awarded for the first time in the competition’s history.
The departments’ north is a valley surrounded by mountains, creating a corridor for dry winds from the Atlantic Ocean to travel south all the way to the Pacific. Because of this, conditions in the north tend to be drier and experience earlier harvests, while the south is more humid and experiences longer rainier seasons.
Santa Rosa is the traditional home of the Xinka people, some of Guatemala’s earliest inhabitants. Having arrived from the Andes mountains via the Pacific Ocean, the Xinka are one of the country’s only indigenous communities that does not share cultural or linguistic similarities with the Maya, Guatemala’s largest indigenous group. While less than two-percent of the modern-day population identify as Xinka, they have become one of the loudest voices in the fight for Guatemala’s environmental preservation. In recent years, the Xinka have stood up to multinational mining companies that buy up land and destroy established farms in search for silver. The community has banded together and fought to be recognised as the region’s traditional owners, who want their land to be used for more environmentally and socially sustainable projects.
HOW THIS COFFEE WAS PROCESSED
As owner Darwin explains, the processing of his coffee requires a few stages, to ensure the highest cup quality possible. The first stage is the picking, when the team at Calagual only pick coffee at 25-26° Brix. The Pache variety easily achieves this metric, as it has a naturally high concentration of sugars.
Once the coffee is picked, the second stage of the processing is 36 hours of aerobic fermentation in cherry form. This is done using permeable nylon sacks, which keeps coffee stable by matching its internal temperature with that of the surrounding environment. At this stage, the team is very careful to place the sacks filled with cherries in a cool, dry place to protect them from the elements, as high temperatures can accelerate fermentation and introduce undesirable flavours.
The third stage is the laying of the cherries on Calagual’s African drying beds. When laying cherries out, the team carefully sort through them to remove any unripe or damaged fruit – only then does the drying finally begin. Darwin has chosen African beds over cement patios to dry his coffee, as patios retain too much heat during the day and can affect the final cup. Raised drying beds have the benefit of allowing air to flow freely over and under the cherries, keeping them cool as they dry.
Cherries are left to dry for approximately 8 days before Darwin and his team begins to turn them by hand. They prefer to keep clusters of cherries together at this stage, to homogenise the drying process. Cherries take around 24 days to reach the desired moisture level, as Darwin believes the flavours in the cup benefit from a longer and slower drying time.
As Darwin puts it, “We do all of this with a lot of love… It’s a work we enjoy doing and it makes us happy to be able to do it well!
