What's in the Box: Basa and La Colmenita

Basa Family

The Basa family farm is located on 12 acres in Idido, Yirgacheffe where they cultivate, pick, and dry their own coffee. They belong to a collection of farmers who work together to secure a better future for themselves by taking more ownership over production. For this team, quality is paramount from start to finish.

Our importer, Keffa, buys directly from the export group that Basa belongs to. When Samuel from Keffa visited the Basa family in January 2021, he gave them a bag of our roasted coffee along with the Good Food Award medal! These farmers take great pride in producing their coffee, and we couldn’t be happier to share the end result with them. As you sip this coffee enjoy its sparkling cup quality full of blueberry, lemon grape and jasmine notes.

Francisco Cardona

It has been a few years but we welcome back a memorable Guatemalan coffee, La Colmenita. Francisco Francisco Cardona Martin, or “Chico Cardona” as he is known by the locals, started picking coffee full time by the age of 15. He dreamt of owning his own land, and that vision drove him to save his money and persist. Ten years later in 2002, he bought his first tiny plot of land high up in the remote mountains of the Huehuetenango region where his coffee trees are shaded underneath chalum, grevillea, and mature pine trees and the farm is only accessible by narrow mountain roads and impossibly steep switchbacks—you can’t grow coffee much higher than this at 1850-2000 masl! Francisco soon began cultivating coffee, and Finca La Colmenita was born.

He named his farm La Colmenita—“The Beehive”—because he loves his bees. Chico Cardona takes care of three apiaries—or somewhere around 150 hives! This Guatemala coffee is packed full of brown sugar sweetness, milk chocolate, and strawberry notes.

Shade Trees at La Colmenita