El Injerto

Hacienda El Injerto

Beans in pergamino, drying in the sun on the patio.

The deep red clusters of the Bourbón varietal.

Its amazing what a person will do for a good cup of coffee.

On Tuesday the 17th, I began waiting at a bus stop in San Pedro Carchá near Cobán, Department of Alta Verapaz, at 3:00am. Three busses, one taxi, a pick-up truck, hundreds of kilometers and 16...and a half... HOURS... LATER, I arrived at Finca El Injerto. And the moment I did, I immediately knew that every minute on the bus and every kilometre was worth it. Let me try to explain...

Six Km from the border between Huehuetenango, Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico, there is a barely noticeable left hand turn onto a dirt road between a hotel and a hardware store. 8km of climbing up the road, around tight turns, over rocky mounds, between mountains in a narrow ravine, takes about 45 minutes and gains at least two thousand feet in altitude. I was let out of the back of the truck I hitched a ride in at an empty market plaza and followed the directions to the finca. "over the bridge," I was told, and was amused to find that this was a bouncy, rocking suspension bridge strung with cord and planks high above a river below, wide gaps between the boards and all. On the other side I climbed a rocky trail through branches of Bourbón and Catuaí coffee trees that reached eagerly into my path. On the branches were clustered the healthiest and most voluptuous bunches of coffee cherries that I have ever seen in my life. This, already, to me, is heaven. At the top of the trail, I finally meet Arturo Aguirre, son of the finca´s owner, Arturo Aguirre.

El Injerto was begun in 1874 by the great grandfather of the younger Arturo, and taken over by the third generation in 1956, at which time the farm produced only 300 Quintales of parchment coffee, or about 3,000 lbs. Today, nearly 500 acres of coffee surrounded by virgin rainforest produce over 6 containers of coffee per year at roughly 37,500 lbs each. El Injerto coffee is widely regarded as one of, if not the best coffee in all of Guatemala. The finca is the only one in the world to ever place first in two Cup of Excellence competitions, with two separate varietals no less. On site there is a significantly advanced wet-mill with a number of unique innovations in coffee processing, an 8,000 sq. meter drying patio and five enormous drying drums, a fully operational dry-mill for final processing and sorting, a roasting and cupping facility, vermiculture and composting, hydroelectric, water treatment, a tortilleria with a machine that cranks out 3,000 tortillas per hour to feed the 4-600 seasonal pickers, all of whom recieve higher than usual payment for their strict attention to detail in harvesting.

Me with the little babies. To replace trees that have outgrown their productive years, between 15,000 and 20,000 new ones are planted every year.

Only the reddest of the red cherries, the best ones at the peak of ripeness, are harvested.

After a long day in the fields, the pickers bring the cherries to the wet mill to begin processing the same day.

You can read books and cup coffees and peruse websites in the states, for sure. But I learned early on that the best way to learn about coffee is to go down and hang out with it. One of the things that I hoped to learn more about during my time in Guatemala is one of the more complex and specialized elements of specialty coffee: Varietals. I left the workshop over a week ago with a much better idea of the importance that varietals of coffee have on cultivation practices and cup qualities. Different sub-species and hybrids take to different altitudes, have different levels of productivity, are more or less disease resistant, and so on, and it is important for a farmer to know what he or she is working with. Here at El Injerto, I finally had the chance to walk the hillside with a knowledgable farmworker and be taught "That´s Catuaí," shorter plants, denser foliage, slightly smaller fruits packed closely together along the whole branch; very good productivity, and in the cup a nice acidity but less sweet, balanced and refined than Bourbon. "That´s Bourbon," Taller plants, lighter foliage on horizontal branches, deep red berries wrapped in seperate clusters around the branch, more disease prone and less productive but absolutely prized in the cup for sweetness, cleanliness, balance and complexity. "That´s Pacamara," broad leaves, large berries, mid-sized plants and one of the most notoriously amazing qualities of coffee in cultivation. "That´s Maragogype." woah. Trees more than twice my height with very sparse foliage and eNORmous cherries so few and far between it´s a wonder to me why anyone would bother farming a plant with such low yield - until I taste it, that is.

One last note before I move on. It´t interesting to me to find how refind cupping, or the systematic, methodical tasting of coffee, can get. You can start by cupping coffees from different countries. A sumatra and a kenya and a guatemala will all be remarkably different even to a first time cupper. Then you can cup different coffees from the same country. Ten Guatemalans, though all Guatemalans, will taste different depending on the farm where they were grown and the processing, altitude, etc...this I´ve known for some time but was reinforced earlier this week at a cupping I did with the master cupper at the regional office of ANAcafe, twelve different Guatemalan coffees, all from the same region of Guatemala, and twelve remarkably different coffees on the table. Now here, at El Injerto, I cupped seven coffees, all grown here at the same finca, within the same 400 or so acre area, and all distinct from one another in some way. Catuaí from Bourbón, well rested Bourbón from too fresh of a picking Bourbón, first quality Catuaí/Bourbón blend from beans of the same harvest that were sorted out as floaters. And so on. We get pretty geeky.

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It´s incredible how different this trip has been compared to my first excursion to the coffeelands. There, in Mexico, I learned about worker´s struggles and indigenous resistance, stayed with a Maya family, slept on a dirt floor. Here, I have slept in the guest quarters of the Casa Patronál and shared the dinner-table with the landowning family while struggling through self-consciousness about this (and my spanish speaking abilities) to strike up conversations with the indigenous workers. While my research and reading about Guatemala has focused on the lives and the rights and struggles of peasant farmers in a strikingly segregated society, I can´t help but concern myself with the inevitable distinction of class in the patronal system of landownership. Before this, I have only spent time with indigenous campesinos who cultivate their own plots hundreds of times smaller than this property and operate as members of co-ops and farmers associations. At El Injerto, I walked the land with workers, had conversations with them at the wet-mill and learned of the ways that the Aguirre family re-invests the quality premiums their specialty coffee receives into the farm and community. While many questions go unanswered having had only two days to explore, I leave the farm with confidence that the owners of El Injerto truly concern themselves with the well-being of the people who work so hard there. They´ve invested in a tortilla factory to help feed every worker for free and distribute masa for making at home. There is a clinic on-site where workers can get medical assistance and prescriptions for free. Pickers are payed more here per quintale than any other farm in the area. Workers are continually educated in the art and craft of producing high quality coffee. Two months ago, they received the comprehensive social responsibility certification given after careful inspection by the Rainforest Alliance. While the complexities of such a worker-owner relationship certainly remain, It is clear that within this system, few if any fincas maintain such a high commitment to their workers as El Injerto. I will end these thoughts with the words I left in the guest book:

"Bummer for everywhere else that it will be difficult for me not to judge other coffee farms by El Injerto´s standards of quality, dedication, responsibility and hospitality. I wish I had the words - Spanish or English - to express the extent of my awe and gratitude."