What are the best pure coffee brands in Mexico and how to brew Mexican coffee beans with V60

Mexico: A Major Coffee Producer

Mexico is one of the world's largest coffee-producing countries and the largest producer of organic coffee, accounting for 60% of world production in 2000. The vast majority of Mexican coffee, particularly organic coffee, is grown by small farmers. The southernmost states of Chiapas and Oaxaca are also, coincidentally, the poorest regions of the country, with the largest indigenous populations. Coffee is one of Mexico's most profitable export products, with nearly half a million small farmers and their families relying on the crop for economic survival.

Historical Development

Coffee did not reach Mexico until the late 18th century, when the Spanish brought plants from Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Decades later, its commercialization began when German and Italian immigrants moved from Guatemala and other Central American countries. In the 1790s, when the first coffee plantations began to appear in the southeastern state of Veracruz, Spanish colonialism was already deeply entrenched in the region; nearly two and a half centuries earlier, the Aztec Empire had long been conquered — and devastated by disease. Mexico's vast mineral deposits meant that for many years coffee and agriculture took a back seat to mineral exports such as gold and silver (and later oil, currently the largest contributor to Mexico's economy).

Although independence from Spain brought some improvements for Mexico's rural population, factionalism, civil wars, and international conflicts with Texas, France, and the United States deprived the country of the stability needed for development or social reform over the next 70 years. During this period, however, coffee cultivation in southern Mexico began to flourish on plantations. Border disputes with Guatemala led to the first extensive land registration in the 1860s, which allowed a few wealthy Europeans to buy large amounts of previously "unregistered" land and feel secure investing in nurseries and long-term plantations. Local landowners and politicians gained a great deal of autonomy and slowly began to push small farmers further into the mountains to protect their land.

It was only after the Mexican Revolution that small farmers began to invest seriously in coffee cultivation. The land reforms of the post-revolutionary period provided thousands of small plots to indigenous groups and laborers. Labor laws such as the 1914 Ley De Obreros freed many of the country's "serfs" and contract servants — many of whom worked on coffee plantations — who in turn brought their skills and seedlings back to their communities to grow coffee. The rise of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party) in the early 20th century also saw the creation of INMECAFE in 1973, the Mexican National Coffee Institute. A somewhat populist, development-minded government considered coffee cultivation a valuable contribution to the national economy, and it provided funding for rural social development.

INMECAFE and Support for Small Farmers

INMECAFE was developed to support coffee cultivation by small farmers. The organization provided technical assistance and credit to farmers, guaranteed purchases, provided transportation to markets, and worked with the ICA to sell coffee on international markets. (The ICA was a London-based cooperation of coffee-producing and consuming countries aimed at stabilizing the volatile coffee market; through agreements, quotas, and subsidies, it succeeded for nearly two decades.)

Characteristics of Mexican Coffee

The typical refined Mexican coffee is similar to a high-quality light white wine — delicate body, a pleasant aftertaste, and noticeable acidity. If you drink black coffee and enjoy gentle acidity, you will like these typical Mexican coffees. Some Mexican coffees, particularly those from the Chiapas region, can even compete with the best Guatemalan coffees in complexity.

Mexico is also the origin of many certified organic coffees. These are typically high-quality coffees certified by various independent monitoring agencies and grown without pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, or other harmful chemicals.

Brewing Recommendations

FrontStreet Coffee's suggested pour-over brewing parameters for Mexican coffee:

V60/90°C/1:15/Time: two minutes

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

The V60's 60° cone and single large hole make it especially good at drawing out the bright, layered aromatics of Ethiopian coffee, and a couple of FrontStreet beans suit it perfectly. The washed Yirgacheffe Giddingding is a classic first stop for specialty coffee: vivid citrus, berry, and floral aromas with a green-tea finish, and a soft, bright acidity closer to ripe fruit than to anything sharp.

If you want more fruit, FrontStreet's naturally processed Ethiopia Huakui leads with tropical aromas — strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit, even lychee — with obvious sweetness and very little bitterness, smooth and juice-like in the mouth, which is why some call it "the coffee that doesn't taste like coffee."

And for the florality of Geisha through the same dripper, FrontStreet's Esmeralda Red Label from Panama brings elegant jasmine, citrus, bergamot, and black-tea notes with a clean, transparent body and a long finish.