Behind the Farm: Finca El Puente

Key takeaways:

• Honduras Finca El Puente is our latest Emerald Micro Lots offering—with a personal connection to Swiss Water
• The farm is run by Marysabel, a fourth-generation coffee producer, who together with her husband Moisés started Finca El Puente thirty years ago.
• The farm focuses on sustainability, innovation, and love for the community.
  

At Swiss Water, we know that great decaf starts with great coffee, and part of that means a relationship with the people who grow it. This season, we're spotlighting one of those relationships: Honduras Finca El Puente, which we featured for the first time this fall in our Emerald Micro Lots line. This farm has a deeply personal connection to us, because the farm’s owners, Marysabel and Moisés Herrera, have a son, Ezri, who works right here at Swiss Water building our export relationships.

Ezri: “Being raised in a coffee producing country, by coffee producing parents has been impactful and has greatly shaped the way I navigate my role at Swiss Water now."

Marysabel and Moisés Herrera

How it Started

When Marysabel, a fourth-generation coffee producer—a gregarious person with a deep love for coffee and the land—met Moisés, they connected through their shared love for coffee and their faith. They began their coffee cultivation journey together in 1996. Today, Finca El Puente is known for pushing the envelope on quality, on farming practices, on doing right by the land.

Ezri: "I think I got the attention to detail and innovation from my dad, and my outgoing nature from my mom; they always taught me to observe and learn. Every time I visit farms at origin, I try to learn from what they do and share with my parents.”

Cup of Excellence

Moisés' forward thinking led the couple to participate in the inaugural Cup of Excellence in Honduras back in 2004. This opportunity opened the door to be known to roasters worldwide, many of whom they've since built decades-long relationships with. When, in 2016, they finally reached their goal of winning first place, they decided not to participate anymore, passing the opportunity along to other fellow producers.

Ezri: “I remember my parents mentality shifted after their participation, when they realized their efforts had paid off. It made us realize how much people like Honduran coffee. This created an impulse to see the value of the coffee we were producing and how much more it could be in the future. Winning first place in 2016 was life changing. Opportunities were opening up from different parts of the world, including the privilege of being at the same table as producers, roasters, and other coffee professionals who had been in the industry for a long time who shared their ideas, mentality, and vision. I really admired my parents’ decision to step back after winning, because of how much Cup of Excellence changed our lives, and the fact that they wanted others to experience the same joy and opportunities.”

Unlike many other farms, Finca El Puente is made up of over 50 farms (all owned by the Herreras) distributed across four counties of La Paz, Honduras. This unique framework, though it presents its challenges, allows for the growth of a great selection of coffee varietals spanning from Geisha, Java, SL28, Catuaí, Pacamara, and many more. It also enables exploring how different terroirs and microclimates affect the coffee trees as well as final cup profile.

Ezri: “Transportation is the main challenge, especially in regions like ours where the road conditions are not perfect. I have countless stories of me driving a truck with 40 bags of ripe coffee cherries, up and down very muddy hills, where the car would slide similar to driving in snow.”

Steady Growth

Initially Finca El Puente started only with a wet mill, patios, and a few dryers, to now having a full dry mill which allows them to have control over the entire supply chain of their coffee, from seed to sack.

In every piece of land they acquire, they preserve some of it in its original state, as part of their effort to protect natural resources. They'll take a smaller harvest if it means healthier land. That's shown up in their use of organic fertilizer and avoidance of pesticides, always trying to reduce their water usage, and provide clean water access for nearby communities too.

Ezri: “When it comes to quality over yield/profit one example is the desire to explore different varieties, and it’s not cheap; it takes four years to harvest the first cherries, and four more years for those plants to fully mature and give their first true harvest. In the end, most of the time it pays off: Not only to scratch our curiosity itch for research and development, but also to have extremely unique flavors pushing the industry forward and exploring what else is possible.”

Among their community-oriented virtues is being a source of year-round jobs, not just seasonal ones, and inviting their customers to also contribute to the cause by donating toward the health and education of those towns. 

Ezri: “My upbringing taught me the work and time that goes into every cup of coffee; it has made me appreciate not only my family's work on the farms, but just as importantly, the work that happens after the coffee leaves origin, from importers to roasters to baristas, and everything in between. Now, whenever I am brewing any coffee on my V60 or scheduling tolls for other exporters, I recognize that, as the last step in this coffee’s journey, it is my duty to do my best work in order to showcase every single hand that the coffee has been through.”

We are happy to collaborate with Finca El Puente and showcase the high quality of their beans as a great decaf in our Emerald Micro Lots offerings. But most importantly, to highlight the work of the people behind it. Their understanding of innovation and change, learning from other producers, and having that sense of social responsibility and respect for the environment, exemplifies just what our Emerald Micro Lots line seeks to represent—the best in coffee.