Origin Profile | Santa Bárbara
|
Time to read 10 min
We’ve been buying coffees from Santa Bárbara in Honduras for a few years now.
It’s an incredible region for quality, with hundreds of small producers growing some genuinely exceptional coffees. This is the story of how a small milling business in a rural town helped put those coffees on the world stage, becoming one of speciality coffee’s most respected exporters in the process — and what that transformation has meant for the community around it.
Honduras - The Context
Honduras’s story is definitely worth its own piece. In one breath it’s archetypal Central America, but in another it’s totally contrasting. This is probably the country most heavily associated with the term ‘banana republic’ - a reference to the huge influence American fruit companies once held over its land, economy and politics. Its relationship with, and usefulness to, the United States has somewhat defined it politically over the past century. At times this has isolated Honduras from its neighbours, creating an economic and political dependency that its ally to the north would not always repay.
Coffee here tells a different story.
In contrast to much of the region, its growth represented a shift in agricultural production towards Honduran hands. While neighbouring countries developed coffee industries around powerful landowners and large estates, Honduras’s best agricultural land on the Caribbean coast had already been swallowed up by the fruit industry. The growth of smallholder coffee production over the latter half of the twentieth century therefore presented a real opportunity for rural Honduran communities.
Central America - Mapchart
Honduras today has its problems. Political instability, inequality and gang violence persist, while rural communities face increasing climate instability and the continued loss of young workers seeking better-paid opportunities overseas. These pressures compound one another, and Honduras remains one of the poorest and most unequal countries in Latin America.
This is a country with immense potential for speciality coffee. It’s also a country where the extra dollars paid for a premium product can create development opportunities fairly quickly. It may not quite sit with Colombia in terms of price and demand, but its producers and terroir are producing some serious show stoppers.
There’s one region we work with in Honduras that’s a real highlight for how exceptional coffee quality can impact communities - Santa Bárbara.
Santa Bárbara - The region
Santa Bárbara’s story is closely linked to its geography. At roughly 5,000 square kilometres, it doesn’t cover a huge area (about a quarter the size of Wales), but its mountainous terrain and historically limited infrastructure can make travelling through the region far more difficult than the distances might suggest. This relative isolation hasn’t shielded it from Honduras’s troubles though. It sits on the doorstep of San Pedro Sula, the country’s second-largest city, and its position between the Caribbean coast and the Guatemalan border has made it an important corridor for cocaine trafficking.
Coffee has long been one of Santa Bárbara’s primary agricultural exports, with family farms frequently spanning several generations.This continuity has helped establish a strong coffee-growing culture and a degree of economic independence within its rural communities, albeit one heavily dependent on the success of a single crop and market. For small producers, a poor harvest or falling market prices can quickly mean financial insecurity. Even today, much of Honduras’s coffee is sold as commodity, with even its high-quality producers struggling to achieve the prices paid in Colombia or Costa Rica.
All in all, the story of Santa Bárbara until the early 2000s wasn’t particularly unusual for a coffee growing region: remote communities, poor infrastructure, a younger generation being increasingly tempted away from the family farm. The thing is though, Santa Bárbara is like Huila level perfect for coffee cultivation. It’s capable of growing a lot of fucking insane coffee.
The potential was there for coffee to transform these communities, but the very crop that could offer them a better future was, in many cases, barely providing enough for families to get by.
Santa Bárbara Mountains, Panoramica Mescalito (cropped) - Memosee79 CC.4.0
San Vicente - The shift
So there’s a reason I’ve chosen to tell this story rather than that of any other coffee region we buy from, and that’s because in the case of Santa Barbara, its speciality revolution is clear and well evidenced. It all started with San Vicente.
San Vicente is a milling and export company in Peña Blanca, at the foot of Santa Bárbara Mountain. It’s existed in a form since the early 1980s, when its founder Fidel Paz began buying and selling coffee on the street. By the late 1990s San Vicente was operating from its own warehouses milling and exporting ‘Premium Bulk SHG’ coffee -high-altitude coffee sold in large commercial lots. It was a fairly conventional operation, purchasing coffee, milling it and taking it to market. At this time, yields, production costs, drying conditions and international market prices largely dictated the income a producing community could expect. Even when individual farmers were growing exceptional coffee, there was little opportunity for that quality to translate into a substantially better price.
The early 2000s, and the arrival of Fidel’s nephew Arturo at the family business, marked the beginning of a shift in the region’s approach to coffee.
Arturo’s grandfather, father and uncles were all coffee producers, so coffee was already deeply embedded in his family life. On leaving school he went on to study agricultural engineering, expanding his technical understanding of coffee production. He brought that expertise from the fields into the family export business, where he began to recognise the potential in his family’s coffees and, more consequentially, those of their neighbours.
Arturo and the team Cupping at San Vicente - Matt Randell, Langdon Coffee Merchants
In a 2018 interview with Parlor, Fidel Paz recounts the moment Aturo showed him this potential. The story goes that Arturo said “Uncle, there's a man way up there who has a coffee that I think is good - I think we can compete in the Cup of Excellence with it”. They separated coffee from the producer he’d noticed - Natividad Benitez - and actually forgot to cup it for some time. When they cupped it they knew they were on to something, well Aturo did, Fidel prefers coffees with lower acidity.
So it’s 2005, rural Honduras, and you just separated and cupped your first ‘fruit bomb’ - you enter it in the Honduran Cup of Excellence and it wins 1st place - scoring 92.48.
That year Arturo and San Vicente helped bring two coffees from the Santa Barbara mountain into the spotlight. Natividad Benítez’s pacas won the whole competition, and another pacas from Miguel Moreno landed 18th place - which is still pretty great. And the thing about these producers, they are just small farms in a vast area, these coffees aren’t alone.
Then they opened the floodgates. Over the next 5 years the number of producers working with San Vicente and ranking in the COE swelled from 2 to 17 - with Santa Barbara producers landing back to back wins from 2008 to 2010.
This stage of the movement is fascinating, because they didn’t really have to do that much - the trees were already growing, producers already knew what they were producing was good, but nobody had had a serious shot at creating visibility for the region. The quality was there, the world just needed to be shown.
Then to Now - Benjamin Paz
By the end of the 2000s San Vicente and Santa Barbara were gaining some serious acclaim. Producers from the area were consistently ranking in national competitions, and their coffees were beginning to command great prices at auction. This was clearly amazing, but somewhat limiting too, like, not everyone can be a competition winner. It was Fidel’s son Benjamin who spearheaded the shift into the next gear.
Benjamin Paz had grown up in the business, and been exposed to much of the excitement of the previous years. He recognised the potential of the region’s producers more generally, and with a business degree and some time working in the US under his belt, was well positioned to expand the operation internationally.
We’ve had the pleasure of hosting Benjamin in Sheffield, he’s a really fucking cool guy. When you hear him speak about the coffees of his neighbours and the projects San Vicente have underway, it’s really no surprise that he became the mouthpiece of the coffee community there. And that’s exactly what happened next, Benjamin started talking.
Over the 2010s Benjamin Paz connected San Vicente with countless international buyers, while simultaneously bringing more and more Santa Bárbara producers into the fold. This two pronged approach created demand while building the supply to meet it. What's more, as San Vicente grew, so did the support and expertise they were able to provide the farmers they worked with.
Benjamin Paz sorting through the mountain of samples San Vicente receives at harvest time - Matt Randell, Langdon Coffee Merchants
Benjamin, Aturo, and Lab Manager Raul Moreno worked together on feedback protocols that allowed producers to adjust their picking and processing methods mid harvest, elevating the coffee's value from the moment the first sample hit the mill. As the export operation grew, so did their support capabilities. Through this period of expansion they focused heavily on agronomic and processing support, using the network of producers delivering to them as a kind of knowledge bank for the community. This openness encouraged the region to develop as one, rather than in competition. So they found the producers and buyers, worked in close communication to support the growers in achieving what the buyers were looking for, and even acted as a financier at times to help producers make the farm improvements they needed to increase quality.
While all this was going on Benjamin spreading the story internationally, becoming a brand ambassador for a rapidly increasing number of farmers. He also established his own project in the late 2010s, himself winning the Honduran Cup of Excellence 2022 and 2024.
Today, San Vicente works with more than 200 producers to produce individually separated speciality microlots, within a wider network of around 400 farming families. The output from these producers varies from top top competition coffees, to just great quality Central American speciality, and with the family name attached, the demand for both is high.
Impact
As with many coffee origins, direct impact for the region is hard to quantify. It can be said with certainty that Santa Bárbara Mountain has benefited from the increased demand and better prices that come with it, but one must be careful not to make blanket statements about people’s lives on the other side of the world.
What is clear to see is that producer families on the mountain are reinvesting in coffee. The varieties on offer are becoming more diverse as the agronomic and processing capabilities of producer families improve, while the names on the bags seem to be ever expanding as younger family members each try their hand at producing top-quality lots. In an area where the loss of young labour to opportunities overseas is a serious issue, it’s great to see new generations taking on and expanding family farms.
That doesn’t mean the producers of the mountain suddenly ‘have it good’. Poor infrastructure, economic insecurity and an increasingly unpredictable climate remain serious challenges. But the improvements in quality, access to market and the prices available for these coffees make for a really positive story.
If you’re interested in digging deeper into the impact of direct trade in the area, this research piece is incredible: From Streetlevel to Farmlevel - Katie Slocum.
I just want to finish with a shout out to the Santa Bárbara producers we've worked with so far:
- Sandra Yamileth Trochez - Don Amado
- Carlos Humberto Sagastume Madrid - El Ziba
- Nelson Ramirez - Finca Androz
- Carlos Alberto Portillo Flores - Don Pancho
- Miladiz Mejia Reyes - Regalo de Dios
What does Honduran coffee taste like?
It's a totally diverse origin, but I'd say that clarity and sweet upfront acidity typify it's classic high altitude profile. Honduran washed coffees can often taste like the edge of a classic Central American profile - comforting body, upfront acidity, lingering sweetness. Naturals from this country, and exotic varieties - theres no limit, they can be just as mental as Colombian fruit bombs.
Where is Santa Bárbara coffee grown?
Santa Bárbara is a mountainous department in western Honduras. Much of its best-known speciality coffee is grown around Santa Bárbara Mountain, where high elevations, varied microclimates and generations of smallholder coffee production have helped establish the area as one of Honduras’s most celebrated growing regions.
What does Santa Bárbara coffee taste like?
This region is mad diverse in terms of flavour profile. Expect fruit, lime and tropical acidity, some berries, white sugar sweetness.
What is Beneficio San Vicente?
Beneficio San Vicente is a family-run coffee mill and exporter based in Peña Blanca, at the foot of Santa Bárbara Mountain. Founded by Fidel Paz, it has played a major role in connecting the region’s small producers with the international speciality coffee market.
Why is San Vicente important to speciality coffee in Honduras?
San Vicente helped identify and separate exceptional coffees that had previously disappeared into larger commercial lots. Following early success in the Honduras Cup of Excellence, the business developed relationships with international roasters while helping producers improve picking, processing, drying and farm management.
Who is Benjamin Paz?
Benjamin Paz is the son of San Vicente founder Fidel Paz. He joined the family business around the end of the 2000s and became particularly influential in developing relationships between Santa Bárbara producers and international speciality roasters. He is also a coffee producer himself and has twice won the Honduras Cup of Excellence.
How many coffee producers does San Vicente work with?
San Vicente works with more than 200 producers producing individually separated speciality microlots, within a wider network of around 400 farming families.
Jasper Dumas
Well I'm pretty far down the coffee rabbit hole, so far that I can see the other side. The other side is the context around coffee, and the shaft of light is a future where I never need to make another Flat White.
Sources:
Landon Coffee Merchant Release Materials
Matt Randell's Mega Voicenote
Parlor's 2018 interview with Fidel Paz
