La Bella is in the south of the Sierra de Las Minas mountain range in eastern Guatemala. This is a beautiful part of Guatemala with most of the Sierra de Las Minas designated as a national park with biosphere status. Teodoro Engelhardt is the fourth generation of his family to grow coffee at La Bella and over the many years the farm has been added to and developed to over 100 acres of forest and coffee. The practices on the farm reflect the care that the wider community has for the area: water is conserved and recycled, the coffee trees are shaded under two levels of canopy to help preserve the wildlife diversity, and all coffee pulp (the fruit of the cherry that is removed during processing) is collected and turned into nutrient-rich soil by the farm's wormery which is then used in the coffee nursery beds. Over the last few years Teodoro has concentrated on replanting less productive areas with more appropriate varietals and has implemented a green fertilization program which includes planting banana trees to fix nitrogen and phosphorus as well as help control soil moisture with additional mulch. Teodoro has recently added two new sections to the farm bringing his total separate areas up to eighteen. Each section (or lot) is planted with a specific cultivar which is picked and processed separately from the other lots. Villa Sachí is planted on one of the new lots and Bourboncito (a dwarf varietal of Bourbon) on the other.

Finca La Bella

We source and roast coffee from single farms, estates and cooperatives. When we taste a coffee that we like, we want to know where it comes from and who grows, picks and processes it. We travel extensively throughout the year, visiting the producers and cooperatives with whom we currently work and looking for interesting varietals of coffee and new farms from which to buy. During these visits we talk to farmers and cooperative members, learning more about the coffee they grow and process and the challenges that they face. We then look to establish a relationship with the grower and exporter of that coffee. We believe that where such a relationship exists, quality, quantity and price requirements can be discussed in an open and equal way. We see this as sustainable, fair and equal trade.

Finca La Bella

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Finca La Bella

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