Origin

Huehuetenango, Guatemala

Coffee is believed to have been introduced to Guatemala by Jesuit missionaries, with accounts of it growing in the country by the mid 18th century, but it only became a serious export crop from the 1850s onward, when poor cochineal harvests and the invention of synthetic aniline dyes collapsed demand for the natural dyes that had dominated the economy. The shift was rapid: coffee rose from around 1% of Guatemala's export value in 1860 to 92% by 1880, accelerated by the 1871 Liberal Revolution under Justo Rufino Barrios, himself a coffee planter, whose government built infrastructure and passed land and labour laws that favoured coffee estates.

 Today the national coffee association, Anacafé (founded in 1960), recognises eight distinct growing regions. Huehuetenango, in the country's far northwest on the Mexican border, is the highest and driest of the three non-volcanic regions. It sits within the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes, the highest non-volcanic mountain range in Central America, and hot, dry winds blowing up from Mexico's Tehuantepec plain protect the slopes from frost, allowing coffee to be grown up to around 2,000 masl. The region is home to several Mayan communities, including the Mam, Q'anjob'al and Chuj, and much of its coffee is grown by smallholders on steep terrain. Its extreme remoteness means that virtually every producer processes their own coffee, helped by an abundance of rivers and streams that allow a wet mill to be placed almost anywhere. Huehuetenango coffees are prized for their intense, often wine-like acidity, fruit character and full body.