Guatemala Cafe Carmona

One of the most popular coffees in our range, Café Carmona from Guatemala is an Arabica variety that captivates with its nutty-chocolate notes and perfect balance.

This coffee comes from the Huehuetenango region — one of Guatemala’s three non-volcanic regions, and at the same time one of the highest-altitude coffee-growing areas in the country, making it exceptionally well suited to coffee cultivation. Warm air currents flowing in from the plains of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, Mexico, mix here with the cool air descending from the Cuchumatanes mountains, creating a distinctive microclimate that protects against frost and allows coffee to be grown at elevations of up to 2,000 metres.

Most farms in Guatemala are smallholdings scattered across a wide area. Given the country’s mountainous terrain and relatively weak infrastructure, large-scale farming is largely impossible. The result, however, is coffee of outstanding quality — since local farmers cannot “go for quantity,” they focus on quality instead. Coffee cherries are picked by hand, and the harvest is spread over time, because only ripe cherries are collected each time, while those that need a few more days are left on the tree. The cherries are then processed either in cooperatives or directly on the farms using depulpers, and dried on patios or African beds.

Café Carmona carries the technical designation SHG EP. The first abbreviation stands for Strictly High Grown and refers to coffees grown at altitudes of at least 1,350 metres above sea level. Coffee plants ripen more slowly under such conditions, but as a result they produce denser beans with a more developed flavour profile. The second abbreviation — EP — stands for European Preparation and refers to coffees that undergo additional quality control, usually involving the hand-sorting of green coffee to remove any defective beans and foreign matter.

Guatemala Café Carmona is an Arabica with low acidity and the classic nutty-chocolate notes typical of coffees from the Americas. We recommend it for pressure-brewing methods — it makes both an excellent espresso and superb milk-based drinks such as cappuccino, latte, or americano. At the same time, lovers of less obvious filter brews will not be disappointed either. These are truly outstanding beans that can shine in any brewing method.