This expansion of quality beyond traditional strongholds is breathing new life into Mexican coffee and offering more diverse profiles to explore.
Supporting Mexican coffee now means supporting a supply chain that’s actively investing in its future. From farm renovations to quality experimentation, producers are betting big on specialty.
It is thanks to the resilience and determination of producers throughout Mexico that we are seeing quality like never before from the 2021/2022 harvest.
If there’s one myth we’d like to bust in the coffee world, it’s the belief that coffee is “man’s work.” Millions of women grow, pick, deliver, sort, cup, and sell coffee—and that’s an abridged list. Women in coffee production face specific obstacles and challenges that are solely the result of gender bias: According to the World Bank, “Women in half of the countries in the world are unable to assert equal land or property rights despite legal protections,” and countless women in the producing world have the three full-time jobs of being the sole caretakers of farm, family, and homestead.
There are lots of coffee-growing regions with potential, but when we think of untapped opportunities to invest in producers and make a real impact on quality and recovery, we can’t help but think of Mexico as a perfect example of what “potential” means from a coffee source. There are good varieties, a strong cooperative culture, and more streamlined logistics—so what has kept Mexico from truly shining as a growing region?
For the past few years, we have been growing a Women Coffee Producers program, sourcing coffees grown by women-run associations or by the women members of mixed-gender co-ops. We pay a gender-equity premium for these lots in order to support projects or initiatives of the women producers’ choosing. This year, we also hosted a Resource trip to visit two women’s associations, bringing along a group of women roasters who buy their coffees through this program.
Sometimes the easiest things to overlook are those that are right under our noses-or, in the case of Mexico, perhaps right under our borders. Mexico should have everything going for it as a growing country: Its close proximity to the U.S.A. means shipping and receiving coffees is a relative breeze. It’s full of good varieties farmed sustainably, with a high percentage of certified coffees (both Fair Trade and organic). And it has huge development potential from a quality standpoint. Yet Mexico has seemed to be passed over unenthusiastically for the past few years, considered best for “bulk” or blending lots that are hard to get excited about.
Perhaps ironically, however, Mexico’s neighbor to the south, Guatemala, is one of the darlings of the Central American growing region – a reputation deservedly granted thanks to the exquisite profile and general stable productivity there, of course – but the contrast in impressions among the two countries has inspired us to ask whether the grass is really greener on the other side? What difference does a border make? How can we bridge that gap not only in our perception of the coffees, but also manage to equalize them to and with our customers?
Read more for our latest origin report from Mexico and Guatemala, coffee-growing neighbors who have been around the block a few times.
It’s a new year, a new crop, and a whole new selection of opportunities to shrink the distance between your roaster’s hopper and coffee’s source. We at Cafe Imports would like nothing more than to have you join us on our travels into the field (literally) as we seek, study, cup, and source the world’s finest specialty coffees. Throughout the year, we gladly invite our roaster partners along on visits to the producers, mills, and exporters with whom we work year in and year out, to develop personal connections and long-standing relationships, and, of course, to bring home the most delicious coffees we can find.
In 2011, Café Imports green buyer Piero Cristiani was sourcing in Mexico with our producer partners at CESMACH and saw that there were a considerable number of women producers dropping coffee off for processing. On the heels of our women’s producer program in Guatemala with CODECH, Piero presented the program to CESMACH, wherein coffee from […]
For about five years, we have been trying hard to find the real coffee gems and top producers in Mexico’s vast countryside and varied regions. In a country which has historically produced more standard coffees, we felt that somewhere in the mix of 5 million bags existed great coffees that were just getting blended together, […]
Finca Nueva Linda from Cafe Imports on Vimeo. Nueva Linda is a Specialty Coffee Estate located in the Sierra Madre mountains of Southern Mexico in the state of Chiapas. The farm shares a buffer with the Triunfo Biospehere reserve, a tropical cloud forest preserve of some 50,000 acres, which helps to temper a changing climate and provide […]
Chiapas March 2011: El Triunfo coop CESMACH coop, Union el Triunfo By: Tim Chapdelaine People take back Mexico. The final panel in the extraordinary Diego Rivera Mural in El Palacio Nacional, Ciudad Mexico. The Diego Rivera mural is magnificent. His friendship with Trotsky and choppy marriage to Frida Kahlo fed his art. This piece, of which this photo is […]
