Honduras — Pedro Sagastume Los Quetzales Pacas (Honey)

Tastes Like — 🫐 Black Currant • 🍑 Apricot • 🍒 Black Cherry • 🍯 Dark Honey

DETAILS

• Producer: Pedro Sagastume
• Farm: Los Quetzales
• Region: El Sauce, Santa Barbara, Honduras
• Varietal: Pacas
• Process: Honey
• Altitude: 1,600 MASL

INTRO

From Pedro Sagastume at Los Quetzales — a super sweet, deeply fruited honey processed Pacas from the same Santa Barbara farm that produces his Cup of Excellence-acclaimed Gesha lots. Picked directly off the drying beds behind Pedro's home, this is about as traceable as Honduran coffee gets. In the cup: black currant, apricot, black cherry, and dark honey.

THE PRODUCER

Pedro Sagastume is a third-generation coffee producer with over thirty years of experience. In 2011, he purchased land in the El Sauce community of Santa Barbara and named it Los Quetzales — the farm where he eventually began growing his COE-acclaimed Gesha lots in 2018. In recent years, Pedro has divided his farms into multiple lots and given many of them to his children to manage and cultivate for themselves, though he still maintains some of that farmland himself. The Sagastume family runs three farms in the area, with the farms located very close to El Cedral, in a region where Santa Barbara consistently places high in Honduras' Cup of Excellence.

Pacas is a natural Bourbon mutation discovered in El Salvador in the 1950s — a compact, productive variety with good disease resistance that thrives in Santa Barbara's cool-night, warm-day microclimate at 1,600 MASL. Under honey processing, its inherent sweetness and structure build the deep black currant and cherry character that define this lot.

THE PROCESS

The Honey process at Los Quetzales involves:

🍒 Hand-picking — Pacas cherries selectively picked at peak ripeness and floated to remove lower-density beans 🔧 Dry depulping — Cherries pulped without water on arrival at the family's wet mill, leaving all mucilage intact on the seeds ☀️ Solar-bed drying — Coffee dried with full mucilage intact on raised beds in solar dryers

The dry depulping with full mucilage retention is the defining step — by pulping without water and leaving all of the sticky fruit layer on the seed, the honey process at Los Quetzales builds the maximum possible dark fruit sweetness and honey depth from the Pacas cherry, producing the black currant and apricot richness and dark honey finish that define this cup.

THE CUP

A super sweet and deeply fruited honey Pacas from the same Los Quetzales farm as Pedro's celebrated Gesha — black currant depth, apricot and black cherry sweetness, and a long dark honey finish in a rich, indulgent cup that reflects everything Santa Barbara's terroir can achieve. Picked off the drying beds behind Pedro's own home.

Flavour Notes

🫐 Black Currant 🍑 Apricot 🍒 Black Cherry 🍯 Dark Honey