2021 Advent Calendar
Vista Hermosa Coffee Collective
Specialty Coffee Advent Calendar – 2021
Dec 7
Vista Hermosa
Producer: Edwin Martinez
Origin: Huehuetenango, Guatemala
Roaster: Coffee Collective
Cultivar: Red and Yellow Bourbon, Caturra, Pache
Process: Washed
Altitude: 1600-1900 masl
Taste Profile: Clean and balanced coffee with an elegant acidity. Aromas of pecan nuts, nougat and orange blossom.
Roast Date: 11.11.2021
This is the first coffee we bought directly from the farmer when we first opened our roastery in 2007. Edwin Martinez and his father run their farm in western Guatemala. Their dry mill is located in the mountainous landscape alongside their fields. Here, the washed coffee is dried under the sun rays on the patio.
Coffee Collective
Green coffee beans neither smell nor taste of coffee as you know it. The taste and aroma evolves only during roasting. We wish to prove coffee a product of nature – of cultivation, varieties of coffee trees, soil conditions, rain, sun, wind – everything that in the end leave their distinct fingerprints on coffee’s taste.
This is why we seek out extremely clean, sweet and aromatic coffees, and roast them lightly in order to highlight their natural taste. Each coffee is roasted with it’s own roast profile to enhance that particular coffee’s unique qualities.
We roast in a modern Loring SmartRoast 30 kg roaster that allows us to control the roasting profile in detail. This roaster uses less energy and has less emissions than traditional roasters.
We roast every day and supply our wholesale customers, our own coffee shops and webshop customers with fresh coffee on a daily basis. And yet, freshly roasted coffee is just a small part of the equation. We buy, roast and sell freshly harvested crops that are in season, we store the green beans in either vacuum bags or special Grain Pro bags in a climate controlled cellar, and we rinse every bag of roasted coffee with nitrogen in order to preserve the high quality. Every roasted batch undergoes a number of quality checks, the most significant being the cupping. We taste every single batch and we always strive to do even better.
When we launched The Coffee Collective in 2007, we wanted to form a transparent trade model that would guarantee us the best quality of produce, and guarantee the producers payment that meets that better quality. It goes without saying that producers must be paid accordingly in order to take an interest in raising standards. For that reason, it is basic in Direct Trade that we ensure that surplus charges paid for premium quality reach the producers.
Visiting producers every year builds a personal relation. On the one hand, they get to know who we are and that we take good care of their product. On the other hand, we get to know them and understand how our produce is grown. During visits, we exchange what qualities we prefer and we get to experience the details of production at first hand.
Coffee is grown in countries with substantially different living conditions than ours. For that reason, many coffee lovers wish to trust that those who have created the basis for the better quality are paid accordingly. Unfortunately, consumers are often given the run-around rather than actual facts about how a given coffee has been traded. This is why we have formed the two fixed pledges in our Direct Trade model mentioned above – for your guarantee