Mexico Sochiapam

Story

We love this winey and floral coffee from the Sochiapam municipality in Mexico. It boasts tasting notes of purple grape, cranberry, sugar plum, and apple. We called it lovely, zingy, sweet, and jammy. It’s delicious.

The Sochiapam municipality is one of Oaxaca’s largest coffee growing areas. It is a heavily wooded region filled with wildlife which is also home to a natural reserve where logging, hunting, and fishing is prohibited. Residents and area producers are committed to ensuring the reserve is protected and kept intact. Smallholder farmers here live in rural areas that are only accessible by foot or mule. A typical farm size is 1 to 2 hectares, with some larger farms up to 5 hectares. 

This coffee comes from our friends at Red Fox Coffee Merchants who have worked closely with Sochiapam producers in recent years to improve their quality of coffee.  For many years Sochiapam was known for producing large volumes of coffee rather than quality. Red Fox laid out a quality-forward plan for producers that has slowly gained footing in the area. They encouraged farmers to replace lower quality rust-resistant hybrid varieties with varieties known for better cup quality. They also encouraged producers to selectively harvest coffee cherries vs strip-picking, ensuring that only ripe cherries make their way to processing (a crucial step in ensuring a high quality cup of coffee). They additionally introduced other best practices including proper fermentation techniques and improved drying techniques. As more and more producers started to employ these strategies to great success (earning more money for a higher quality product), a communal shift started to take place in the region from quantity-first farming to quality-first farming. This coffee lot is a result of that shift.