We met Marysabel Caballero and Moisés Herrera, the owners of Finca El Puente, in 2005. Over the past two decades, they’ve become one of our closest partners and among the people most willing to experiment.
This coffee started with an idea to build an exceptionally flavorful decaffeinated coffee. Making that happen was more complicated than having the idea. Decaffeination adds another step to an already complex supply chain: coffee has to travel from origin to a decaffeination facility before eventually making its way to us. That means additional logistics, cost, time, and risk. For a relatively small lot of special coffee, those hurdles can make an exciting idea feel more like a pipe dream than a viable product. However, this year, we made it happen.
Moises and Marysabel naturally processed and sun-dried this coffee at Finca El Puente, a method that creates intense fruit flavors and sweetness in the cup. From Honduras, the coffee traveled to Swiss Water in Vancouver, where they removed the caffeine without taking away what made the coffee taste incredible in the first place.
There’s a personal connection there, too. Marysabel is a fourth-generation coffee producer, and now she and Moisés are watching the next generation follow in their footsteps: their son, Ezri, works at Swiss Water.
After more than twenty years of working with Finca El Puente, this coffee was worth the wait.