Tasting Notes

Orange, cherry, pear, caramel, chocolate, and butter

Regional Information

Location: Oaxaca, Mexico

Grower: loosely organized smallholders and processed to remove caffeine by Cafiver

Process: Decaffeinated by Sugarcane Process

Coffee Background

Imagine starting at sea level in the popular Mexican beach destination of Puerto Escondido and traveling along progressively steeper and curvier roads through villages, where the local population still wears traditional indigenous clothing, eventually arriving at a lush tropical forest intercropped with coffee, bananas, corn, beans, fruit trees, and views of the Pacific Ocean in the distance below. This is the Oaxacan coffee growing region where the Sierra Madre del Sur coastal mountain range is peppered with small family farms, each consisting of just a few acres of land. 

Nearly forty percent of the producers are women who rely on coffee income to support their families. Producers here continue to identify with their indigenous roots using organic practices to manage their farms and protect their environment. They harvest cherries, then depulp, ferment, wash, and dry the coffee using their own micro-mills. 

Once post-harvest processing is completed, the coffees are decaffeinated using Ethyl Acetate (EA), a naturally derived chemical created as a byproduct of fermenting sugarcane. In this method the green beans are steamed or soaked to expand the beans for caffeine extraction. The expanded beans are then soaked in EA, a naturally occurring organic compound found in many fruits and vegetables which can be synthesized for coffee decaffeination. In the presence of EA, caffeine bonds with the compound and is drawn out of the bean. The decaffeinated coffee is then removed from the EA solvent, rinsed thoroughly, re-dried and re-bagged for transport.