Notes: Blackberry, Chocolate Sauce & Vanilla Bean

Community: San Pedro Yosotatu, Oaxaca
Farmers: 40 neighboring community farmers
Varietal: Pluma, Bourbon, Typica
Elevation:  1700 - 1900 masl
Process: Washed

Our love affair with Oaxaca and its coffees continues with this release from 40 neighboring micro-coffee farms in San Pedro Yosotatu, Oaxaca, high in mountainous Sierra Madre del Sur. We began working with Red Fox Coffee Merchants in Oaxaca... seven years ago? And spent a wonderful week in Oaxaca right at the outset of covid in March of 2020. 

From Red Fox: 
The deeper we get into the world of Mexican coffee, the more excited we get, and those of you who have tasted the coffees or met some of our producing partners know why. Right now, we’re looking at Pluma, a subregion of Oaxaca that brings with it an incredible history along with incredible coffees. Boasting the singular Pluma Hidalgo variety, an offshoot of Typica, at elevations as high as 2200 masl, Pluma coffees bring with them a wide range of flavors: distinct dried fruit notes like raisin and prune, saturated sweetness like brown sugar, richness like drinking chocolate, complex malic acidity like green apples, and even florals like amber honey and peach blossom.

Over the last few decades, Pluma’s coffee production has evolved dramatically, shifting from the hands of large estates into the hands of local smallholder farmers. Nowadays, Pluma is almost exclusively the province of smallholders with farms averaging just 1-2 hectares, but going back 80 to 100 years, the coffee production landscape looked completely different.

Over the last couple years, we’ve seen this start to shift. Being able to introduce these coffees to a group of buyers willing and ready to buy them at a viable price has started to build trust in this region and reinvigorate local farmers, who are beginning to understand that their coffee is worth more than they’ve always been told. They are ready to be able to dictate their own futures and gain access to new pathways to finance and reinvest in their own success.