Guatemala, Gascon Gesha

Expect notes of Lemon Sherbet, White Grape, Oolong Tea.

Every farmer's journey with coffee is unique. For Gildardo Contreras, it began in his childhood backyard, where his parents tended 50 bourbon trees. Together, they harvested and processed the beans which kickstarted his love for coffee. In 2012, Gildardo realised his dream by purchasing a farm from a relative who cultivated mainly avocados. Gradually, he expanded by acquiring neighbouring parcels, growing the farm to 54 acres.

Today, Gildardo's son, Felipe, manages the farm, prioritising quality. He collaborates with neighbours to enhance cultivation and processing techniques. They explore natural remedies for pests, including a homemade blend of garlic, chili, onion, and water to combat fumagina mold.

This delicious Gesha is a hybrid of different processing techniques. The coffee cherries are pulped and transferred to concrete fermentation tanks. The coffee ferments for 76 hours with the temperature constantly being monitored. Then, after fermentation, the mucilage is removed. The coffee then returns to the fermentation tank and soaks in water for another 24 hours. This gives us the best of both worlds – the extreme flavour clarity of washed coffee, with the sweetness of a fermented natural.

You can trace the roots of the Gesha cultivar to the birthplace of coffee, Ethiopia. The story goes that, in the 1960s, a USDA expedition to Ethiopia went to look for wild cultivars of coffee, to research and potentially begin cultivating them. While there, they visited an area called Gesha, where they collected seeds. The samples ended up in a research lab in Costa Rica, and were largely ignored until the cultivar made its way to Panama and debuted to the world at the Best of Panama competition in 2004. It was here that it blew the judges away, and has won the top spot every year since.