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The Story:
Like the turtle ("La Tortuga"),
Honduras taken its own sweet time to really become engaged
with the Specialty Coffee industry. Honduran coffee has,
for decades, taken a backseat to its better-known neighbors
Guatemala, El Salvador and Panama. The conditions for greatness
- soil, altitude and climate - have existed all along, but
it took the momentum of the Specialty industry, in tandem
with technical assistance efforts on the ground and quality
competitions like the Cup of Excellence, to successfully
bring Honduran coffee out of the shadows and into the spotlight.
Intelligentsia launched the La Tortuga mark after purchasing
a coffee lot in the 2004 Cup of Excellence auction. Since
that time they've become good friends with the whole Caballero,
and in 2006 Intelligentsia contracted the exclusive rights
to the annual coffee production of Fabio Caballero's "La
Tina" farm. This is the first farm Don Fabio owned,
which he inherited from his mother-in-law. The land first
entered the family in 1930, making it their only 3rd generation
farm parcel. Don Fabio also believes that the genetic purity
of the original heirloom varietals planted on the farm adds
to its quality. It also has the historic privilege as being
the first coffee farm in Mogola region of Honduras.
At over 5,400 feet, La Tina farm is one of the highest
farms in Honduras. The views are breathtaking, and there
is no doubt that this piece of land is a wonderful place
to grow coffee.
Don Fabio and his son-in-law Moises Herrera are artisan
farmers. The reason they've had so much success in comparison
to many of their neighbors has less to do with the quality
of the land than it does the quality of the workmanship
and the amount of investment that the Caballero family has
been willing to make in their coffee operation. The fact
that they do their own wet-milling gives them an advantage
as well. They have the ability to control quality all the
way to dry parchment. And despite a lot of historic debt
they continue to deal with, they have shown that they understand
what it takes to produce greatness year in and year out.
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