Honduras
Santa Barbara
Smallholder Producers
Smallholder Farms
Pacas, Parainema, Catuai, Bourbon, IH90, Lempira
Washed
November–March
Fudge, Dark Caramel, Orange
1250 meters
N/A
69 kg w/ GrainPro
APAC - Melbourne - RPM
APAC - Sydney - RPM
Ally’s Core Coffee program features green coffees which represent the classic profiles of some of the world’s best known coffee origins. Core Coffees—like El Pino from Honduras—are named for trees found in their respective origin, celebrating the culture and the natural environment from which they came.
El Pino is sourced from smallholder farmers living and working in the Santa Barbara coffee region of Honduras. These farms are commonly found between Lake Yojoa and the peaks of the Santa Barbara Mountain, which reaches an elevation of 2,774 meters above sea level, making it the second tallest mountain in Honduras. Lake Yojoa is an impressive natural reservoir of water from volcanic origins; the lake contains an incredible diversity of aquatic animals, and 50% of the bird species of Honduras can be found around the lake.
Coffee has been cultivated in the region since the 1940s, originally with farms found exclusively in the lowlands. It wasn’t until the 1970s that coffee became the main economic driver of the region with the high prices for coffee at the time. Bourbon and Typica plants were the most common varieties for many years, until the area’s coffee farms were stricken with la roya in 2011. During the recovery, with producers committed to continuing to work in coffee, famers began replanting their plots with varieties resistant to diseases and pests including the Parainema, IH90, and Lempira varieties which comprise part of this community lot. Today, Santa Barbara is a world-recognized coffee origin, with many of the country’s Cup of Excellence winners coming from farms located high on the Santa Barbara Mountain.
El Pino is processed using traditional Washed processing. Freshly harvested coffee cherries are manually pulped before being fermented for approximately 16 hours. The fermented coffee is then washed to remove the mucilage, and the washed parchment coffee is dried until reaching its optimal humidity.
The Honduran Department of Santa Barbara is one of the country’s 18 departments. It stretches from the border with Guatemala into the central mountain highlands. The Reserva de Vida Silvestre Montaña Verde wild animal preserve and the Santa Barbara Mountain are two of the main natural features of the department.
To the east of the Santa Barbara mountain, covered in primary rainforest filled with rich biodiversity, the shores of Lake Yojoa form part of the department’s borders. This region of Honduras is rich with smallholder agricultural production and far removed from the sprawling cities of San Pedro Sula to the north and the capital Tegucigalpa to the southeast.
The verdant mountains of Santa Barabara are part of three of Honduras’ coffee growing regions: Copan, Opalaca, and Montecillos. Temperatures range from 12-22 degrees Celsius throughout the year and shade trees over coffee include fruit trees, such as guava, and forest hardwoods, such as pine.
