Honduras Hybrid... Parainema?
This year we bought 2 coffees from the Paz families mill, San Vicente, in Santa Barbara Honduras. Santa Barbara is home to some of Honduras’ most striking coffee’s due to their unique growing conditions as well as the hard work of the producers and the Paz family. I got to meet Benjamin Paz at our importers office this year, and it's his passion to connect the small producers he works with to roasters. He told me that he works with around 2,000 producers! A lot of what San Vicente produces is macro-lots, but they put in a lot of work to separate, sort, and process micro-lots. These micro-lots represent the fruit of a single farmer’s labor. The lots are usually only 5-12 bags (each bag weighing 150lbs).
Pacas is a very reliable and standout varietal that is planted by specialty coffee growers (we are releasing a Pacas later this year!), but lately a new hybrid varietal has been discovered to produce good results. Parainema was developed to produce a lot of coffee cherry while also being resilient to common diseases that plague coffee shrubs. The lineage of Parainema comes from the Sarchimor varietal, whose parents are Timor and Villa Sarchi. Parainema was not developed to have a superior cup quality, however, the growing conditions and higher elevation at some of the farms in Santa Barbara make for a perfect match for Parainema. It produces a unique cup profile that is bright and unmistakably tropical fruit forward.
Benjamin Paz told me that Marco Tulio Sabillion is a distant cousin of his. Marco drives a school bus in their town and he became interested in specialty coffee after seeing what Benjamin was doing to help producers fetch higher prices for their high scoring coffees. Marco had some land that he wasn’t cultivating, so after talking with Benjamin he started planting coffee. It takes at least 3 years to begin to get some fruit on the trees. Last year Marco had his first very small harvest. This year, 2018, is his first full harvest! The coffee blew me away on the cupping table so we are very happy to share it with you this fall.
