PRODUCER: Roberto Figueroa

LOCATION: El Cedral, Santa Barbara

PROCESS: Washed

VARIETY: Pacas

MELON, MILK CHOCOLATE, HAZELNUT/ALMOND LIQUEUR

This is our 7th year roasting Roberto’s coffee and we’re very excited to be serving it again.

Roberto’s story is one of resilience and the power of family support. Coming from a background of hardship and poverty, Roberto’s current reality of overseeing three manzanas of coffee plantations wouldn’t have been possible without the sacrifices of his family, specifically three of his six older brothers who left Honduras to work in the US as undocumented workers and gifted their younger brother with the money to buy the land

that currently make up his coffee plantations. Miguel Moreno, one of Roberto’s neighbors is the backbone of all of Collaborative Coffee Source’s current partnerships in Santa Barbara. He is also, to use Roberto’s words, his role model. Roberto’s love of agriculture is the reason he purchased land using his brother’s gifts, but he started out as a vegetable farmer. These crops proved to be difficult and unsustainable, so inspired by the successes he observed of Miguel’s changing coffee production from commercial to specialty, Roberto switched to coffee.

Some of the current challenges at El Plan include, leaf rust and Broca, that severely attacks the plants. Future plans for the project include improving the mill and overall, maintaining the great effort it takes to produce good coffee, securing partnerships in the changing market.

The villages of Cielito, Cedral and Las Flores follow one after another along the mountain range in Santa Barbara. Grown on this hillside is mostly Pacas, a coffee species akin to Bourbon, as well as Yellow Catuai and Pacamara. It is challenging to process coffee cherries in areas like these which are close to the jungle and thus, to rain. The drying process, in particular, is especailly demanding. But when these processes are precisely controlled, seemingly problematic factors (like drying under challenging conditions) are what make coffee from this area particualry interesting. The coffee produced here cups with flavor attributes not found anywhere else in Central America.