This coffee comes from Andrés López Lorenzo’s micro-lot, a member of Catracha Coffee Company, he has a four-acre plot in the Santa Elena growing region of Honduras’ La Paz Department, just a few short miles from the Salvadoran border to the south. He and his wife Maria are raising four children, and the family relies on their annual coffee harvest as the main source of income. Its cultivar is a mix of Bourbon and Catuaí.
Bourbon, one of Arabica’s two commonly grown heirloom varieties (Typica is the other), traces its history back to the island that was once its namesake, now a French department known as Réunion, off the coast of the African continent East off the much larger island of Madagascar. It was once the most commonly grown Arabica variety in the Americas, and while still fairly common, it has been outpaced en masse with higher-yielding, more disease resistant trees. The high quality of the Bourbon cultivar is frequently identified by its citric acidity.
Catuaí is a dwarf variety with copious proliferation throughout the Americas. Originating from a hybridization of Caturra and Mundo Novo in Brazil, the coffee is resistant to wind and rain, relatively high yielding, can be planted more closely together than larger cultivars, and requires some precision in fertilization.
*Catracha Coffee Company was founded by Mayra Orellana-Powell in 2010, and is dedicated to improving the life quality of its members by increasing quality and yield, providing educational seminars, and directing transparent financial transactions that return 100% of the profits from sold, exported green coffee to the farmers.