Coffee: Campamento Alto #1 Microlot, Guatemala

This beautiful coffee comes from Aurelio Villatoro’s farm, La Esperanza, in La Libertad, Huehuetenango, just steps from the Mexican border.  In Feburary I met Aurelio and his family on my trip to Guatemala.  Aurelio was so gracious as to let our group come into his home to cup samples off many farms from the region that we had milled and sample roasted the night before.  All of the beautiful coffees from Guatemala that have graced our shops I tasted in Aurelio’s home.

Fast forward two months, to the Specialty Coffee Association tradeshow in Seattle.  Edwin from Onyx Coffee and Finca Vista Hermosa (a farm we’ve partnered with, and a coffee you are all familiar with from our shop) held a silent auction for select limited microlots from Aurelio and Rolondo Villatoro from La Nina (not related).  At the auction, we selected 2 extremely small, hand selected, beautiful lots from Aurelio and 1 from Rolondo.

Campamento Alto #1 is the first pick of the area on La Esperanza that Aurelio selected for the auction held at SCAA.  He set aside land to produce about 6 bags of parchment, yielding close to 3 bags of green coffee to export.  Campamento Alto is the only lot where he selected 2 lots.  Thus lot 1 and lot 2.  They're right next to each other.  We chose lot #1.

This coffee spoke to us for its beautifully refined and integrated acidity, as well as the bourbon characteristics that jump out of the cup.  Bourbon is a coffee variety renowned for its fruit-like sweetness, and the sweetness in Campemento Alto reads like a perfectly ripe peach.  And just as a perfect peach needs acidity to make the flavors sing, the acidity in this coffee does just that. It is completely intregrated and harmonious.  Paired with the peach component is an almond milk flavor and mouthfeel, silky and satisfying.  Campemento Alto reminds me a bit of a peach tart with a hint of vanilla and an almond meal crust.  It's a perfectly structured coffee with a sweetness that lingers for days and days….

With only 3 bags of this coffee produced, we have just enough to get to know it, fall in love with it, and pick up a few bags as Christmas gifts!  We will run this coffee through the week of Christmas.

- Christine