Honduras Coffee Overview

Challenges for Honduras Coffee

For many years there was little talk of Honduran coffee in the specialty coffeeSpecialty coffee was a term devised to mean higher levels of green coffee quality than average “industrial coffee” or “commercial coffee”. At this point, the term is of… market. I participated in some early cuppingCupping is a method of tasting coffee by steeping grounds in separate cups for discrete amounts of ground coffee, to reveal good flavors and defects to their fullest…. events, before Cup of ExcellenceThe Cup of Excellence is a competition held yearly in many coffee-producing countries, designed to highlight the very best coffees from each origin.: The Cup of Excellence (COE)… came to this nation, and saw great potentialin cup quality but technical problems in the wet-processing of lots and in drying the coffee. While farmer education has increased greatly in Honduras, the new challenges are plant diseases like RoyaCastillo is a selection of the Colombia cultivar that has become the most commonly grown coffee in Colombia. It is preferred to the older resistant variety, Variedad Colombia…, that greatly affect the small farmer who lacks resources to combat this and other fungi.

Honduras has all the environmental factors on its side: soil, altitude, climate, and farmers who are increasingly better trained in agricultural practices. All its neighbors have sophisticated coffee production: Guatemala, El Salvador and, to some degree, Nicaragua. But what has been lacking is quality coffee processing, capital to modernize the dry mills, and a distinct “name” in the consumer market. Honduras has been known mostly as a source for commercial coffee, not specialty grade. It is still a major source for lower-priced arabicaArabica refers to Coffea Arabica, the taxonomic species name of the genus responsible for around 75% of the worlds commercial coffee crop.: Arabica refers to Coffea Arabica, the… coffees headed to large roasting companies. This means that even a high quality Honduran does not always fetch a good price, and in fact many from Copan and Santa Barbara districts are smuggled into Guatemala and sold as such. Without a premium price for quality, the farmer, the mill and the exporter have no incentive to incur the added expense that would help realize the coffee’s quality potential. So Honduran coffee ends up as a mild blender and not as a single-origin or farm-specific coffee. It is a vicious cycle.

We have offered lots from the Santa Barbara and Copan areas that rival great Guatemalan coffees, as well as finding great quality in Ocotopeque and the areas in the south, near NicaraguaNicaraguan coffees from the Segovia, Jinotega, Ocotal and Matagalpa regions are nice balanced cups. They often possess interesting cup character along with body and balance, outperforming many other…. A problem in Honduras is proper drying of the coffee after it is wet-processed. Some areas are wet and humid, and the coffees can be ruined when drenched by rain showers. Marcala area in the South has an advantage of a drier climate, although the coffees do not have the soaring brightnessA euphemistic term we use often to describe acidity in coffee. A bright coffee has more high, acidic notes. : A euphemistic term to describe acidity in coffee…. of the Northern zones.