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Guatemala

San Lorenzo

Located near the town of San Cristóbal Verapaz, in the cool, rainy reaches of Cobán, Guatemala, Finca San Lorenzo nestles in the verdant hills at around 1,500 metres above sea level. San Lorenzo is the Valdés family’s second farm, purchased in 1987 as a sort of ‘little brother’ to another of our favourite Guatemala farms, Santa Isabel. When Lorenzo was first bought, there was only one small plot of land under coffee. Today, the family have developed 20 different lots under coffee, covering 110 hectares of the farm. The remaining 35 hectares are under forest cover, which the family is managing in a very interesting way (see below).

  • Farm San Lorenzo
  • Varietal Catuaí, Caturra, Sarchimor
  • Process Fully washed
  • Altitude 1,550 metres above sea level
  • Town / City San Cristóbal, Alta Verapaz
  • Region Cobán
  • Owner Valdés Family
  • Farm Size 145 hectares
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San Lorenzo

The Valdés family have generations of coffee farming experience under their wings. Finca San Isabel was first acquired by Luis Valdes II’s great-grandfather in 1875, when the land was granted to the Valdés family by Guatemala’s President; however, the farm was passed out of the hands of the family when it was inherited by a nephew who sold it to a third party. It took time for the farm to return to the Valdés family, who took charge again in 1960 when Luis Valdes I purchased it, bringing it back into the family. He started the coffee plantation in 1965.

Guatemala
About Guatemala

Coffee has helped fuel Guatemala’s economy for over a hundred years. Today, an estimated 125,000 coffee producers drive Guatemala’s coffee industry and coffee remains one of Guatemala’s principal export products, accounting for 40% of all agricultural export revenue.

It is most likely that Jesuit missionaries introduced coffee to Guatemala, and there are accounts of coffee being grown in the country as early as mid-18th century. Nonetheless, as in neighbouring El Salvador, coffee only became an important export crop for the country at the advent of synthetic dyes and industrialisation of textiles – in the mid-19th century. Throughout the latter half of the 1800s, various government programs sought to promote coffee as a means to stimulate the economy, including a massive land privatisation program initiated by President Justo Rufino Barrias in 1871, which resulted in the creation of large coffee estates, many of which still produce some of Guatemala’s best coffees today.

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