Guatemala Michicoy Finca Rosma

Finca Rosma is owned by the Morales family, managed by the son Fredy. The name is in honor of his grandmother, Rosemarie. It's located on a high ridge where you drive in to the farm at nearly 1900 meters, then descend down to the mill at around 1600 meters (just check out the dizzying slope on the other side of the cherry 'weighing' station in the 1st pic). When Alejandro Rosales bought the farm in 1963, the only way to get there was by foot, or horseback. It's not that easy of a trek by road, either. The farm is quite steep, typical for the high ridges of the Sierra Los Cuchumatanes mountains. I found the plantings to be quite a jumble of cultivars. There were certainly a lot of old Bourbon trees, but I saw many Typica (Arabigo), and some Caturra and Catuaí as well. There were red and yellow varieties too. Processing is mostly wet-process, traditional fermentation, but they are working with a very tight space; there is not a lot of flat areas in this topography. So they have to manage their batch sizes carefully or they will rapidly run out of patio space for sun-drying the coffee, though partially remedied with the addition of a large area of raised drying beds. Regardless of the details, they are producing an amazing coffee, and I wouldn't suggest that they change a thing!