Featured Coffee Fridays: Mexico

The sweetness and wonderful aroma of this coffee is enjoyed by many and seems to be one of our most popular varieties. We roast this bean lighter to pull out its best flavors, making it a great cup to enjoy any time of the day. Plus, our Mexico coffee is certified fair trade and organic.

Tasting notes: sweet and citric with a smooth mouthfeel; mellow fruit with almond, lemon and lemongrass flavors.

Where it’s from

Triunfo Verde Co-op is made up of 346 members with farms contributing located in the buffer zone of El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve. The biosphere is located in the highlands of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas. El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve is one of the world’s most diverse forest reserves. This reserve contains Mesoamerica’s largest continuous cloud forest, and it serves as a refuge to thousands of plant and animal species. El Triunfo is a rare and valuable sanctuary which requires continued protection. All the coffee they produce is shade-grown, and biological corridors are created in order to facilitate bird and animal migration.

History

As throughout most of Mesoamerica, Mexico was first planted in coffee during early colonial times, most likely in the late 18th century. Due to the greater attention paid to the region’s rich mineral deposits and mining opportunities, however, coffee didn’t really develop as an industry until later, especially coming into its own in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the redistribution of farms after independence and the emergence of smallholder farmers, specifically those of indigenous origin. In the late 20th century, the Mexican government established a national coffee institution called INMECAFE, which, like the FNC in Colombia and ICAFE in Costa Rica, was developed in order to offer technical assistance, botanical information and material, and financial credits to producers. Unfortunately, INMECAFE was something of a short-lived experiment, and dissolved in 1989, leaving growers with a vacuum in their access to support and resources—especially those in very remote rural areas. This disruption to the infrastructure as well as the coffee crisis that followed the end of the International Coffee Agreement plunged Mexico’s coffee farmers into despairing financial times, which, of course, affected quality dramatically. Throughout the 1990s and since the beginning of the 21st century, an increased presence, influence, and focus of Fair Trade and Fairtrade certifications and the emphasis of the democratically run small-farmer cooperative organization has worked to transform the image of Mexican coffee to one that reflects sustainability, affordability, and relatively easy logistics, considering its proximity to the U.S.