Guatemala Finca La Tormenta Honey Maragogype

Tastes Like: Granny Smith Apple, Plum, Red Grape, Pear
Origin: San Agustín Acasaguastlán, El Progreso, Guatemala
Variety: Maragogype
Producer: Roberto Chéves & Ana Recinos
Elevation: 1800 masl
Process: Honey

Roberto Chéves and Ana Recinos are first-generation coffee producers, and Finca La Tormenta is the farm they have built together in San Agustín Acasaguastlán. The farm covers 29 hectares at 1,800 meters, and only eight of them are planted in coffee. It borders the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve, home to the largest intact cloud forest in Central America. La Tormenta placed sixth at the 2025 Cup of Excellence, and in April 2026 its Villa Sarchi took the honey category at Flores del Café, Anacafé's national competition. We have bought from the farm through Balam Coffee Project for four years, and this is the third La Tormenta coffee we have released this season.

Granny Smith apple opens the cup, crisp and tart, and plum sits underneath it with a darker, juicier sweetness. As the cup cools, red grape fills the middle, and ripe pear carries through to the finish. The body is round, and the finish is long and clean.

Maragogype is a natural mutation of Typica, found near the town of Maragogipe in Bahia, Brazil, in 1870. A single dominant gene gives it large leaves and some of the largest beans of any Arabica. It is also one of the parents of Pacamara. Its cup is known for a soft acidity and a gentle, rounded sweetness. The plant grows tall and usually produces its first crop in its fourth year. It yields little and has low resistance to leaf rust, nematodes and coffee berry disease. World Coffee Research places its best above 1,300 meters in Central America.

La Tormenta calls this process Hidromiel, the Spanish word for mead, and it runs in two stages. Ripe cherries first go whole into carbonic maceration for 90 hours. With the skin intact and oxygen kept out, fermentation starts inside the fruit before the cherry is ever opened. The cherries are then depulped, and the parchment dries with its mucilage left on, so a coat of fruit sugar stays on the coffee. The method builds fruit inside the whole cherry, then keeps that sweetness with the coffee through drying