Seasonal Mexico Soconusco 250g Beans

Beautifully complex and fruit-forward, this season we’re proud to share a coffee that offers a rare expression of what unique flavours Mexico has to offer. Coffees with this level of clarity and vibrancy from this region don’t come around often, which is why this one stands out as something truly special.

Grown in the misty highlands of Chiapas, stretching across 310 hectares of lush fertile land and resting on volcanic soil. This chosen micro-lot comes from Finca Guadalupe Zajú; a remarkable farm founded over 100 years ago. Tucked along the historic ‘Ruta de Caféone’ and now owned by a long time friend of ours Teddy Esteve. Guadalupe Zaju is a farm that takes a thoughtful and precise approach to every stage of production, alongside maintaining community and environment at its core values. Whether it’s converting old mills into schools for the local children or taking steps into providing new water conservation in the area. Finca Guadalupe Zaju is bringing new life to the area of Mexico, maintaining its spot as one of the best sites for speciality coffee.

This Micro-lot sits at elevations between 1,300 and 1,400 meters where varieties like Marsellesa and Híbridos thrive, both chosen for their strong performance in the field and their ability to produce amazing flavour. These high elevations and ideal growing conditions within the landscape, ensure that the coffee produced here benefits from rich mineral content, cooler temperatures, and slower cherry development.

Using unique growing methods such as shade grown cultivation beneath native magnolia and guava trees, that stand over 25m tall, is just one of the ways that the farm helps maintain a healthier ecosystem and biodiversity in the local area. This allows the cherries to mature slower then most other methods, which enhances both the body and depth of its flavour. Cherries are selectively hand-picked at peak ripeness and washed to bring out their clarity and vibrancy in each harvest.

While rooted in tradition, Teddy Esteve and his family also embrace thoughtful innovation. One of the ways this is shown is the use of a Pinhalense ecopulper that is used to efficiently separate ripe cherries from underripe or underweight ones. Whilst removing debris along the way. This process significantly reduces water usage compared to other methods, reflecting the farm’s commitment to water sustainability in the local area. After pulping, the coffee is fermented for 12 hours in the cool mountain air, then gently dried in mechanical dryers. Despite its scale, the farm maintains a strong focus on quality, detail, and a hands-on, artisan approach in every batch.

Why Our Coffee is The Best?

Sourcing the Pick of the Crop

Established relationships with producers and the coffee farming community means we can consistently source the best Arabica and Robusta beans from over 40 origins across the Coffee Growing Belt. At Kingdom Coffee we always demand the pick of the crop. We buy Grade 1 or “Strictly High Grown” – SHG coffee beans. By selecting only coffee beans from the highest elevations we can be sure that the bean has matured more slowly, grown to a larger size and with more density to create a consistently great taste profile.

There’s no denying that coffee grown at higher elevations produces the best flavour profiles, which is then sorted and graded by the farmers with greater care and attention and therefore command a higher premium price which we are very happy to pay! We believe passionately that farmers should be rewarded fairly for their hard work and the quality of their crop.

 

 

Investing in the Purest and Cleanest Roast

ROASTING BETTER: We are unique in that we roast on a clean bed of air in small batches as opposed to conventional drum roasting - only 1% of coffee is roasted this way. Air roasting elevates the natural sweetness to give a smooth and pure taste. Unlike traditional roasting, the chaff, the skin of the bean, that surrounds the raw bean is removed during the air process whilst in normal roasting this is burnt onto the bean. This makes the resultant air roasted beans more pure as the beans will taste less burnt and acidic.

CONSISTENCY: Another benefit to Air Roasting is consistency - typical roasters rely upon roasting “to colour“ which returns a high degree of variance from batch to batch. The Air Roasters rely upon exact metrics such as temperature and time with specific profiles that have been developed by our Q Grader, a certified coffee professional, to suit the particular bean. An exact science rather than guess work.

 

 

Protecting the Environment

We all have to recognise and assess our individual impact upon the environment. Our new Air Roaster uses 30% less energy than a typical roaster and reduces wasted heat by recirculating it in a fully enclosed system. We have a catalytic converter to ensure that harmful gases released are reduced by around 96%. Committing further to minimise our impact on the planet we have moved our packaging to 100% curb-side recyclable. This new packaging still protects that fresh roasted taste.

 

 

OUR BEANS are amongst the freshest on the market, being roasted to stock in the UK as opposed to importing roasted beans on a much longer timescale. Our Neotech roaster is more environmentally friendly, energy efficient and better than conventional drum roasters in that it can roast in specific small batches with unique roasting profiles that are able to compensate product variations and unfold the unique flavour of each individual coffee blend whilst reducing wasted heat by recirculating in the fully enclosed system.

Our range of Ethical coffees support our partnership with Toybox, who we aim to donate £100,000 over a period of ten years, having donated £50,000 in the last 5 years. This enabled Toybox to provide the resources needed for the street outreach team throughout 2020, conducting 240 visits to children in the most high-risk areas in Guatemala City as well as deliver 100 children across the city a warm and nutritious meal each week. Your continued support of Kingdom Coffee means that we can fund vital projects like this so thank you very much!