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The Descendants Coffee
Where It Grows

Our Farmers

Great coffee starts long before it reaches our roastery.

Our relationships with coffee producers began by going to the source, spending time on the farms, meeting the families behind the coffee and seeing firsthand how it’s grown, picked and processed.

Nicaragua · 2019

A Trip That Changed How We Buy Coffee

It began with a short documentary about a coffee farmer named Diego in Nicaragua. His story stayed with us, and Jesse wanted to learn more about the person and the farm behind the coffee.

He tried calling Diego but didn’t get a hold of him. Still, Jesse decided on faith to make the trip.

A week before the trip, our friend heard what we were planning and gave us $10,000 to purchase coffee from Diego’s farm. Jesse boarded the flight without ever having met Diego or tasted his coffee.

He spent the next week on the farm with Diego and his family, seeing firsthand how the coffee was grown, picked, and dried, and getting to know the people whose work went into every harvest.

That trip changed the way we looked at buying coffee. We didn’t just want to know where our coffee came from. We wanted to know the people behind it.

Since then, we’ve traveled to Honduras with our entire family, spending time with coffee-growing families, walking their farms, and seeing together where the coffee we roast begins.

What started with one trip has become how we do things: know where our coffee comes from, know the people who grow it, and build relationships that last.

A film by Fresh Look Video. The one that started it.

From the Branch to the Drum

Before coffee ever reaches our roastery, it goes through a process at origin that turns the fruit of the coffee tree into the green coffee we roast.

  1. Ripe red coffee cherries hanging in clusters on the branch
    01

    Coffee cherry

    Coffee begins as a fruit. The cherries are harvested by hand when they are ripe, with the coffee seeds — the beans we eventually roast — inside.

  2. A handful of sun-dried coffee cherries held above the drying bed
    02

    Natural process

    For the natural process, the whole cherries are dried in the sun, with the fruit left on the bean as it slowly dries. This allows the coffee to absorb more natural sugars from the fruit, often creating a sweeter, fruit-forward cup profile.

  3. A handful of coffee beans still in their pale parchment layer
    03

    Honey process

    In the honey process, the outer skin is removed, but some of the sweet fruit mucilage is left on the bean as it dries. This creates a balance of sweetness, acidity and body, giving the coffee a rich, layered flavor.

  4. A handful of clean green coffee beans ready for export
    04

    Washed process

    In the washed process, the fruit is removed and the beans are washed and cleaned before drying. This produces a clean, bright and consistent cup profile, often with clarity and crisp acidity.

Who Grows It

Three growers, named, with the facts we can evidence.

  • Diego Chavarría and Jesse at the mill, holding a bowl of green coffee between them
    El Dorado · Matagalpa, Nicaragua

    Diego Chavarría

    Three hundred hectares in the mountains of Matagalpa, farmed by the same family across generations. It turns out roughly 160,000 pounds of organic green coffee a year.

    The people who pick it are housed and fed by the farm, their families included. Diego has also planted more than forty churches across Nicaragua, the work he does with what the harvest returns.

    Organic green, per year
    ~160,000 lb
  • Byron Corrales among the coffee trees, checking ripening cherries on the branch
    Los Pinos · Nicaragua

    Byron Corrales

    Byron grows organic specialty coffee and farms it the long way, conservation practices that cost him more now so the land is still worth farming later.

    He was seven when his grandfather taught him to plant his first coffee tree, and he has farmed the same ground since.

    He puts the people who work for him through post-secondary education. And he once sent 152 pounds of his first-class coffee, free, to be poured for people living with addiction and homelessness, coffee he could have sold at the top of the market.

    Given away, no charge
    152 lb
  • The Blossom Creek sign at the entrance to the co-operative in Honduras
    Blossom Creek · Santa Bárbara, Honduras

    Blossom Creek Co-op

    A co-operative in Santa Bárbara growing between 1,200 and 1,600 metres, high enough that the cherry ripens slowly and the sugars have time to build.

    Their washed arabica cups at 83. It reaches us as a single origin, from one place rather than blended across several.

    Cup score
    83
At Origin

Nicaragua and Honduras, on the Days We Were There

The picking, the drying beds, the mill and the people who run them. Photographed on the farms rather than bought from a library.

The visiting team and the farm crew on a hillside road, the valley and mountains behind them
A visitor standing among coffee trees heavy with ripening cherries
A worker holding a crate of freshly picked red cherries beside a loaded truck
Crates of freshly picked red cherries stacked beside a farm truck at harvest
Long rows of raised drying beds covered in cherries, a mountain ridge behind
Two pickers working through the branches, gathering ripe cherries by hand
A grower in a wide-brimmed hat loading a crate of cherries into a truck bed
A worker raking parchment coffee across a raised drying bed in full sun
Three men standing beside a drying bed under a polytunnel
Two young visitors beside a bed of drying parchment under a polytunnel
A boy holding a wooden tray of parchment coffee at the drying beds
A father and son together inside the drying house
Two people building the timber frame of a drying structure
A group standing with tools on freshly broken ground
Three men holding a burlap sack of green coffee outside the mill
The team gathered under the Blossom Creek sign inside the mill
In His Own Words

I was 7 years old when my grandfather taught me to plant my first coffee tree. I liked to look at the sun coming through the trees, to share the lessons my grandfather taught me about the growth of plants, and watch the rainfall and surrounded by the scent of the earth. I listened to the song of the birds and rode my horse to school every morning. 42 years have passed in my life since then and I want to transmit our family’s art, our work of many years, discovering the flavors we’ve learned to bring forth from our mountains, expressed in this cup by way of respect for our environment and the songs we sing every day in our coffee farm.

I talk every day with my plants, and they ask me who will consume each bean of our production and in this moment when you are tasting our coffee, I want to talk with you and tell you in silence that you are contributing to the conservation of our planet, that this cup has come from the Arenal Forest Reserve, that its flavor that you’re tasting on your palate is the expression of life and the life energy of all the living beings who live in our community. Now we are together in embraced by this moment celebrating with joy the responsibility of protecting the future of our generations.

The cup of responsibility is a song of love.

Byron Jose Corrales Martinez

Taste What They Grew

Three blends, roasted to order in North Carolina from the green coffee these farms send north.

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