Guatemala Huehuetenango Miralvalle Estate Information

Coffee is a craft best learned by tasting widely and comparing notes with other drinkers.

FrontStreet Coffee - Guatemala Huehuetenango Miralvalle Estate Information

FrontStreet Coffee - Guatemala Huehuetenango Miralvalle Estate Washed Coffee

GUATEMALA MIRALVALLE

HUEHUETENANGO LA DEMOCRACIA

Origin: Huehuetenango, Guatemala

Variety: Bourbon / Catimor / Caturra

Estate: Miralvalle Estate

Altitude: 1,500 meters

Processing Method: Washed

Harvest Processing Year: 2017

Roast Level: Medium roast

Flavor Description: Honey, wild ginger flower, sugarcane sweetness, malic acid

Miralvalle Estate

Benjamin "Mincho" Villatoro founded Finca Miralvalle in the mountains of Huehuetenango and from 1970 onward devoted himself to producing refined, distinctive coffee. The estate covers 30 hectares, with altitudes running from 1,500 to 1,900 meters, annual rainfall of 1,800 millimetres, and Bourbon and Caturra planted side by side.

Benjamin died in 2013, and the estate passed to Jorge Villatoro, who has carried on his predecessor's pursuit of flavour and quality in specialty coffee.

Since 2014, Miralvalle has taken an "Excellence" award three years running at the Huehuetenango Highland Coffee Competition, evidence that its coffee is a faithful expression of the region's profile.

The estate has also appeared in Guatemala's Cup of Excellence (C.O.E.) for four consecutive years.

Its 2016 C.O.E. result placed it 10th in Guatemala overall.

Guatemalan coffee grows inside the high-altitude cloud belt, where the sharp swing between morning and evening temperatures slows the plant's development. Fast growth produces soft beans with muted flavour, so these conditions suit coffee ideally, and the country's fertile volcanic soil gives Guatemala the best growing conditions of any Central American nation.

Where other Central American coffees tend to be cleaner and fresher in profile, Guatemala shows a wider range of styles because altitudes vary so much from one region to the next. Two areas shape how the world reads Guatemalan coffee: Antigua, near the capital, and the Huehuetenango highlands in the northwest. Antigua delivers more richness with a faint smoky note, while Huehuetenango is defined by its delicate citrus acidity.

The name "Huehuetenango Highlands" carries real romance. The highlands lie in northwestern Guatemala, with fertile soil and abundant rain, and the distinctive circular valley topography creates a cloud belt that amounts to nature handing the region an ideal coffee-growing environment. This is why Huehuetenango is known worldwide for outstanding quality, and why most of the award-winning beans in Guatemala's annual competitions come from its highlands.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

The cup this estate delivers is built on the washed process, so it is worth knowing what that method actually does. Washing is the traditional way of handling coffee cherries with water: the cherries are floated to sort them, the pulp is removed, the beans are fermented to break down the mucilage, then washed or soaked again, dried, and finally hulled to give the green bean. Because the beans spend so long in water, chemical changes take place inside them and much of their simple sugar is consumed, which lowers the coffee's sugar content while raising its organic acids. The result is that washed coffee keeps more of the bean's own aroma and shows bright fruit acidity, cleanliness and freshness.

If that clean, bright style is what you look for, FrontStreet Coffee's Yirgacheffe Gedingding Cooperative is a good next step. Gedingding is a skilled processing team from Gedingding village in the Worka area, and its coffee is prized for being especially refined and clean. The washed process lets jasmine florals and bright citrus acidity come to the front, and after a light-medium roast it adds green tea and honey notes. It suits pour-over, cold brew and espresso alike.

For a washed coffee built around fruit rather than florals, FrontStreet Coffee's Kenya Little Tomato is one of the best-known examples, since Kenya is particularly strong at the double-washed method: the beans are floated, rinsed to strip mucilage, soaked, dried and then hulled. All that rinsing and soaking pushes the juice-like quality to its limit, giving cherry tomato, smoked plum, Asian pear and black plum aromas with brown sugar sweetness - juicy and balanced, and a favourite among coffee drinkers.