Guatemala
La Espina

About the farm and producer

Yosis Hugo Calderón Martínez has been working with coffee nearly all of his life. He points to his grandfather, a coffee producer with whom he spent most of his childhood, as the reason for his strong work ethic and knowledge of what goes into producing excellent coffee. For Don Hugo, to be a coffee producer means holding onto hope and struggling to produce the best coffees he can each year, even in the face of new challenges.

Hugo’s farm, Finca La Ceiba, bears the name of Guatemala's national tree. In some ancient Maya cosmology, ceiba trees were considered sacred and believed to be a kind of bridge that allowed communication and connection between the earth, underworld and heavens. We named this lot of coffee “La Espina,” or “The Thorn.” When ceiba trees are young, their trunks are green and often covered in thick, pointy spines. They protects the trees’ thin bark and branches from being damaged by animals and stops parasitic vines from wrapping their way up the trunk. Because ceibas are a keystone species in Northern Guatemala’s rainforests, thorns are an essential part of keeping not only the individual tree but also the wider ecosystem healthy.