Helm Coffee Roasters - Victoriana Ramirez Washed Caturra | Guatemala

Guatemala — Victoriana Ramírez Tzunwitz Caturra (Washed)

Tastes Like — 🍑 Quince Jelly • 🍇 Raspberry • 🍬 Butterscotch • 🌿 Lemon Verbena

DETAILS

• Producer: Victoriana Ramírez Vargas De Salucio
• Farm: Tzunwitz
• Region: Cantón Unión, Concepción Huista, Huehuetenango, Guatemala
• Varietal: Caturra
• Process: Washed
• Elevation: 1,610 masl
• Farm Size: 0.9 hectares

INTRO Coffee at the smallest, most personal scale there is — a 0.9-hectare farm run by Victoriana Ramírez, from wet processing she's managed since the early years to day-to-day supervision today. Quince jelly leads, a dense orchard-fruit sweetness between baked apple and rose. Raspberry brightens the middle with a tart lift, and butterscotch carries the sweetness underneath, rounder and darker than plain caramel. The finish is lemon verbena — herbal, fragrant rather than acidic. In the cup: quince jelly, raspberry, butterscotch, and lemon verbena.

THE PRODUCER Tzunwitz began in 2000 with about a quarter hectare of inherited family land in Guatemala's Huehuetenango highlands, where coffee grows under chalum and grevillea shade. Victoriana's husband works in the United States, and his wages funded the additional plots she now runs, with her brother-in-law handling agronomy. When coffee leaf rust tore through the plantation in 2017, costing them the harvest, they cut out the worst-affected trees the following year and pruned the rest back to health. The whole farm produces about 916 kilograms in an average year.

Caturra is a natural dwarf mutation of Bourbon, discovered in Brazil's Minas Gerais around 1915 — a single gene shortened the spaces between branches, making trees compact, easier to pick, and more productive while keeping Bourbon's sweetness and bright acidity. Huehuetenango gives it an unusual advantage: warm, dry winds off Mexico's Tehuantepec plain protect these valleys from frost, letting Caturra ripen slowly at elevations that would kill it elsewhere.

THE PROCESS Every harvest, the family moves into a ranchito, a temporary house among the trees, to pick and depulp on site and return the pulp to the plots as organic fertiliser. Cherries are washed to float off dirt and underripes, depulped, and hand-sorted to pull out defects. The coffee ferments fully submerged in water overnight and into the next day until the mucilage releases. After a final wash, Victoriana spreads the parchment on tarps in full sun, turning it periodically over three to four days to dry.

This slow, high-elevation maturation under the Tehuantepec wind protection is the defining factor — it's what concentrates the sugars behind the quince and butterscotch character that define this cup.

THE CUP Structured, sweet, and clean — quince jelly's orchard sweetness leads, raspberry brightens the middle, butterscotch depth carries underneath, and a lemon verbena finish keeps the cup from ever feeling heavy. Classic Huehuetenango, with the fruit turned up.

Flavour Notes 🍑 Quince Jelly 🍇 Raspberry 🍬 Butterscotch 🌿 Lemon Verbena