Thumbnail Filmstrip of Guatemala El Socorro Yellow Bourbon Images
This is a Direct Trade coffee between Willoughby's and producer Juan Diego De La Cerda. Arrived October 2024, new crop, in Grainpro.
Guatemala El Socorro is multi award winning farm located within a half hour of Guatemala City in the town of Palencia. We have offered coffee from this farm almost every year in the recent past and are fortunate enough to have procured some once again. This lot is a Yellow Bourbon varietal that really impressed us with its sweetness when we evaluated it initially. This season we are offering, albeit briefly, their prized Laurina variety.
This is 'washed' process coffee, meaning that the fruit pulp is washed away. Coffee is fruit and the cherries, once ripe and harvested, have their outer skin removed by a specialized machine. The beans, really the cherry's seeds, are encased in the center of the fruit's flesh which ferments over the course of a day or two; The mucilage is than washed away before being dried. But El Socorro, has very unusual processing technique beyond this standard format. They believe that the warm fruit gets shocked with cold water during this process so they place the just picked cherries into a bath of warm, same temperature water and let them cool gradually before being introduced to the full process. They attribute much of their success to this technique. The farm's success is the result of a strict quality control during whole process, since the management of the plantation, handpicking, wet mill and drying coffee is all done on the farm.
- Producer: Juan Diego De La Cerda
- Location: Guatemala, Palencia
- Area: 750 ha
- Altitude range: 5050 - 6100 feet
- Varietal: Yellow Bourbon
- Type of soil: Loamy-Sandy
- Shade trees: Non traditional variety
This thoughtful approach to coffee preparation has not gone unnoticed. El Socorro y Anexos has won an award in the Cup of Excellence Competition 9 times in the past 13 years, placing first in 2020, 2011 and 2007. While this specific offering has not won an award, we think this coffee still shows the care and attention common to the award winners.
El Socorro Farm Awards (not specifically this varietal).
- 2023 Cup of Excellence® Winning farm - 1st place (Geisha)
- 2021 Cup of Excellence® Winning farm - 2nd place (Geisha)
- 2020 Cup of Excellence® Winning farm - 1st place (Geisha)
- 2015 Cup of Excellence® Winning farm - 3rd place
- 2012 Cup of Excellence® Winning farm - 2nd place
- 2011 Cup of Excellence® Winning farm - 1st place
Coffee of the Year, Best Origin Coffee Winner – SCAA 2011