Last spring I took a trip to Honduras opens in a new tab with the Allegro® opens in a new tab sourcing team while they evaluated coffees from members of a farmer co-op. I’m excited to let you know that the much-anticipated result from that trip is now shareable with all of you! Allegro’s Organic Honduras San Marcos opens in a new tab, a light roast with flavors of cocoa, brown sugar and butter, is now in stores for your brewing and sipping pleasure.This Honduras San Marcos coffee comes from the COCASAM (Cooperativa Cafetalera Sanmarqueña) Co-operative, which consists of 106 organic farmers who live in and around the mountains of San Marcos de Colón. I was honored to meet many of these coffee farmers and to hear their stories about life on an organic coffee farm. For those of you who haven’t worked in the coffee industry, a standard method of evaluating coffees is a process called “cupping.” In this case, a cupping competition was organized to score each coffee, and winning farmers received money to reinvest in their farms. If you’re interested in learning more about the intricacies of cupping protocol, click here opens in a new tab.
The coffee beans from contestants who chose to enter the coffee competition (46 samples total) were roasted to a specific level previously agreed upon for cupping, and then it began: a fast-paced process of pouring, slurping, tasting and scoring. You can watch the action in this video.
Over the course of two days, all of the samples were evaluated on qualities such as aroma, acidity, body and flavor. In the discussion room, I overheard descriptions that ranged from “honey,” “crisp,” and “elegant” to “herbaceous” and in one sample’s case, a note of “green onion”! The afternoon before we left Honduras, we attended a big awards ceremony where each of the farmer’s contributions to COCASAM were acknowledged and prize money was awarded to the highest-scoring farmers.
From there, the sourcing team returned to Allegro home base and carefully selected from the high-scoring coffees (no doubt with several more rounds of sample roasting and cupping!) to bring Organic Honduras San Marcos to you.
I can’t wait to gift some of my family and friends with the coffee produced from my trip. Have you tried Organic Honduras San Marcos yet? I’d love to hear what you think.
