Producer: Nomeil Velasco

Origin: Oaxaca, Mexico

Process-type: Washed

Varietal: Gesha

Cup: Apple Blossom, Rainier Cherry, Honey, Lime, Kumquat

This is a single producer lot from Nomeil Velasco at their farm Finca San Antonio in the Villa Talea de Castro municipality in Mexico's southwest state of Oaxaca. The area is remote and mountainous and is one of the most biologically diverse areas in Mexico. This is a Gesha lot made up of the farm's best Gesha cherries.

The preparation for this coffee was traditional washed process. At harvest, processing begins with the careful selection of fully ripe, hand-picked Gesha cherries. Following harvest, the cherries underwent an 18 hour full cherry fermentation before de-pulping. After being de-pulped, the coffee was fermented for for 24 hours and then thoroughly washed. Finally, the coffee was transferred to zarandas (raised beds with mesh screening), where it dried slowly for approximately 15 days, allowing for optimal flavor development.

The Gesha cultivar is a famed and coveted cultivar with arguably unmatched cup quality potential. The lineage of the cultivar traces back to an old coffee type from Ethiopia that was brought to an experimental garden in Costa Rica as a specimen sample eventually to be distributed to a few farms for further testing. Not much was thought of it until one of these farms, Esmeralda in Panama, separated it out from other cultivars and entered it into a national competition. It wowed, stunned, and won the competition. The cup was so outrageously different from everything else, expressing fruited and floral characteristics reminiscent of coffees from half a world away (Ethiopia). Since then the cultivar has been garnering acclaim. The cultivar will express itself differently given terroir and care.

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