Honduras Santa Elena Gloria Ventura – Macerated Honey

El Rincon’s four-acre Cataui lot rests in the Honduran community of La Tejera, near the border with El Salvador. Grown up high at 1,560 masl, these coffees mature slower, giving them their sweet time to develop notes that sound like they came straight off a dessert menu. Baked pear, crème brûlée, and date meld in a crisp cup you won’t want to miss.

This coffee was honey-processed using carbonic maceration. This means that the coffee is depulped and dry-fermented in airtight barrels for 20 hours with the mucilage still attached to the seeds. Honey processing adds additional fruit aroma and taste to the cup, as the mucilage imparts the flavors of the cherry, which takes any preexisting origin notes up a notch. Expect crisp brightness with a wine-like twist. After fermentation, the coffee is spread across shade cloth to dry in the sun, mucilage still intact.

Grown by Gloria Ventura, in partnership with Catracha Coffee, this coffee is produced with environmental conservation in mind. We’re all about the Earth, so this microlot delicacy was an easy pick for our 2022 Roaster’s Choice lineup. Ventura fertilizes with organic compost, uses lime to control the pH of the soil (coffee requires between 4.9 – 5.6 pH), and sprays organic fungicide to inhibit coffee leaf rust.

Coffee leaf rust has plagued Honduras and much of Central America for years. According to Tim Schilling, the executive director of World Coffee Research, in an article for Daily Coffee News, “we still lack the basic genetic tools to be able to distinguish strains of coffee leaf rust.” Schilling expects a future where farmers will have to adapt to combat coffee leaf rust.

El Rincon’s favored varietal, Cataui, is not rust-resistant, making it harder on Ventura and her farmers, but the measures they’ve taken to stave off the pathogen have benefited the farm tremendously. Because of Catracha Coffee and its nonprofit, the community also benefits from income diversification opportunities that don’t detract from their bottomline.

We are so excited to share this exquisite coffee with you!