With flavor notes of vanilla, caramel, red apple, mango, milk chocolate and coconut, this coffee is both complex and approachable. This flavor profile makes it a wonderful coffee to try for those who enjoy a more ‘classic’ coffee, reminiscent of things that are flavored to taste like coffee, such as coffee-flavored ice cream or coffee-flavored hard candies. So, yeah - yum.

This coffee is grown around picturesque Lake Atitlán, located about 400 km in southwestern Guatemala, about two hours inland from the Pacific Ocean. The lake is surrounded by three volcanoes that enrich the soil there. Sixty-two families from the indigenous Tz’utujil (a Maya ethnic group) make up this cooperative and live in San Juan La Laguna, on the opposite side of the lake from the more touristy Panajachel. But coffee is not the only thing growing on their farms. Diversification of farming and animal husbandry is a key to sustainability and if you were to visit these producers’ farms, you would find a chickens, pigs, tubers, and lots of avocados among the coffee plants.

AROMA: caramel, vanilla
FLAVOR: mango, red apple
BODY: syrupy, coating
FINISH: milk chocolate, coconut
PRODUCER: chochajau co-op
REGION: san juan la laguna, lake atitlán, sololá department
ALTITUDE: 1,300 - 1,900 masl
VARIETY: typica, bourbon, caturra
PROCESS: washed