Sierra Mazateca

Region: Sierra Mazateca, Oaxaca
Country: Mexico

Altitude: 1450 - 1900 MASL

Variety: Mundo Novo, Pluma Hidalgo
Process: Washed

Preparation: EP 0,20
Packing: GrainPro, 69kg

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The Mazateca is located in the state of Oaxaca, one of the most diverse states in México, both biologically and culturally.

The Mazateca gets its name from the presence of the indigenous group, the Mazatec, which is a Nahualt name that translates to “the deer people”. However, in their own language, Mazateco, the group is called Ha Shuta Enima, which means “those who work the hills”.

The land is found between the regions from La Cañada and the Papaloapán Valley, at the northern tip of the state of Oaxaca. As part of the Sierra Madre Sur and the Sierra Oriental, the land is surrounded by high mountains, cliffs, and hills of mainly mesophile forest, bathed by constant rains, and the intermittent presence of mist.

The Mazateca is an important indigenous region where 92% of the population speaks an indigenous language, mostly Mazateco, with a few Nahuatl and Mixtec speakers also. The locals show a connection to their ancestry through their celebrations and traditions, such as celebrations for each town patron, day of the dead, local seed sowing traditions, and many others.

The region is also one of the most lacking in health and education coverage of the country with an alarming poverty and illiteracy level. It is made up of small and isolated communities where the main economic activity is small-scale agriculture, since few people own more than a couple hectares of land. There is an important tradition of coffee growing in this region. The steep landscape makes for hard work but is also the reason for the outstanding cup quality, which for a long time got lost in huge blends.

By separating and cupping the small lots individually though we are able to separate the outstanding, the good, the not so bad, and the plain right ugly.
It may be a lot of work but we are able to make many blends of many qualities and flavour profiles which is undoubtedly worth every ounce of effort we put
into it.

Especially as the average price in the region was MX$35 (US$1.70) / kg of parchment coffee for many years. Even with the high market prices of 2021, the local price only reached MX$45.

Most of the producers continue the coffee production of their parents and grandparents and often the whole family works together at harvest time. Sadly, this is being threatened due to a mixture of low coffee prices, coffee leaf rust, ageing plants and lack of resources and assistance from private or public
sectors. This has led to a drop in yields, as low as 100 kg per hectare. As reference, the average in Colombia is 2,400 kg per hectare, and in Brazil up to 5,200 kg.

For the past few decades, this has contributed to an alarming increase in migration of young people to major cities in Mexico and to the United States. The rise in the abandonment of land and coffee crops by the young has also left the very heavy handed and labour-intensive coffee work to the elderly producers, many of whom we work with are above the age of 70 and even older than 80 years old.

Context
The weather, the land, and the producers together generate extraordinary coffees in this region. The varieties mainly cultivated are Typica, Mundo Novo and Caturra. Most of these plants tend to be over 40 years old which is a major contributing factor for the low yields.

The average amount of coffee processed by each producer per harvest can be as low as 100 kg. This means we all too often buy lots of 20 kg from each producer (the smallest lot we have received was 4kg). The large amount of work for gathering and cupping samples and the microlots turns out to be absolutely worth the effort due to the complexity of the coffees that this region produces.

This is undeniably one of the most impressive coffee producing regions we work with, in Mexico. In the Mazateca most producers may harvest around 100 kilos, but the greater majority is kept for consumption. For this reason, some blends come from numerous producers.

Most coffee producers in the Mazateca have between 0.5 to 5 hectares of land with the average producer working on less than one hectare. This means that, as in much of Oaxaca, production is very small and yields are lower here than in other areas of the state. The Sierra Mazateca mountain range is located to the north of Oaxaca city and forms much of the state’s border with Veracruz. The region is very remote, hard to access, with many in Oaxaca not even knowing of its existence.

Today the region is rarely visited, and even in the coffee world it is often neglected due to the challenging conditions, remote locations and small production. Even by Oaxaca’s low standards production yields are tiny here in part due to the cool temperatures. Coffee is generally grown at 1500 metres and above in the Mazateca and at this latitude, these altitudes experience very low temperatures making frost damage a real issue for producers.

This climate and these altitudes also contribute positively to the cup profile and in general, coffees from the Mazateca are among the most complex and highest quality in all of Mexico. Many producers here do not speak Spanish, and Mazateco is the first language for the vast majority of people in the region. This can make organisation and coordination a little tough, but the quality and potential make the Mazateca one of the main focuses of our work in Mexico.

Working closely with Red Beetle and their associates in the community, we are aiming to open up access to the specialty market for producers in the Mazateca, and to provide a sustainable and profitable supply chain for their coffees. Doing this will provide a long term, stable, and profitable alternative to simply selling to local intermediaries at a market-based price- currently the only option for many producers. In time this supply chain can help to generate capital and investment to help improve yields, production volumes and quality in the Mazateca.

What do the triangles mean?
They illustrate the three sections of our buying structure;
Always, Often, and Occasional.

This refers to a coffee's impact for any given producer, its availability on our offer lists and, its final form as roasted coffee.

The model is a classification for every coffee that we supply. This makes it easier to understand where each coffee in our offer lists sits within our impact framework. And if you are reading this as a coffee roaster, this can help to show you where our coffees can sit within your own offerings.

Always

Often

Occasional

Washed
Washed coffees are often depulped one day after harvest then fermented for between 48 hours. They are then dried on rooftops under direct sun.

Sun-drying is a fairly slow process due to the very cool temperatures, high humidity, and misty afternoons in the region.

Sierra Mazateca
Mountain Water Decaf

Coffee from the Sierra Mazateca is transported to the Mountain Water decaf facility in Veracruz, north of the coffee producing regions we work with. For the processing, the station uses mineral water from Mexico’s highest peak, the Pico de Orizaba, or Citlaltépetl, which sits at 5,636 MASL. The process is chemical-free, immersing the green beans in a high pressure filtration system which gradually removes the caffeine. Once complete, the beans are re-dried and packed for export.

Electronicas

Cup quality isn’t the only factor that determines whether a coffee is deemed specialty or not, and in turn the price a producer will receive. Depending on the buyer’s preferences or the customary export quality levels, a coffee may be determined as destined for the local market, commodity, or specialty export.

These grading scales vary, and include thresholds for physical defects, and foreign matter, which in some countries is known as the factor de rendimiento. What’s interesting about the physical defects is that they do not always denote a dramatic decrease in cup score or outright defective flavour component of the cup.

Electronicas are volumes separated by the electronic sorter in the dry mill, that would be syphoned directly for sale in local markets. However, if they are then re-sorted at a lower tolerance, though there will be physical differences present, the output is still a rather good coffee.

The end result pulls more coffee over the specialty threshold, and improves producer profits for these volumes by up to 1.5x, compared with the local fluctuating market.

These coffees are sold at a reduced price, finding hopefully lots of homes for these undervalued, good coffees. This model is very similar to the Gito lots we produce with our Rwandan producer partners Muraho Trading Co. The more profit we can tease out of the supply chain for producers, the better.

Eloxochitlán
Named after a populous town in the Sierra Mazateca, these coffees represent solid 85 point scoring washed coffees from the region.

Yoloxochitlán
Named after a populous town in the Sierra Mazateca, these coffees represent solid 86 point scoring washed coffees from the region.

Peña Colorada
Named after a populous town in the Sierra Mazateca, these coffees represent solid 86 point scoring washed coffees from the region, with a predominantly fruity profile.

Xanica Community
Pronounced “chanika”, the Xanica Community is found in the lower altitudes of Union San Pedro, between 1000 - 1250 MASL. Xanica is the hometown of Salomon, the founder of Union San Pedro. Xanica is slightly different to the other coffees in this sheet, as 19 members of the community are members of Union San Pedro, and 12 are separate to the cooperative, and represented by Xanica only. We’ve seen great improvements in the quality of these lots of recent seasons, through better practices in the field and extended fermentations for their lots.

Lotecitos Mazateca
Lotecitos, aka the teeny, super tasty coffees. We wanted to make sure that these teeny but amazing volumes made it in some tangible way to the specialty market. The resulting volume isn’t big enough to be described as a whole community’s blend, nor small enough to be considered as a one off microlot. These small harvests from some of the community’s producers score 86+, and so the Lotecitos (or tiny lots) were born.

The Lotecitos are microlots in their high quality, whilst being a blend of coffees from several smallholders. Their cup score on purchase meant that high prices could be paid even for the low volume that each producer could provide.

Lotecitos Mujeres ♀
Read the Lotecitos information above to learn about the ‘how’ of these lots. The Lotecitios Mujeres takes the same approach, and celebrates the harvests of twelve female producers from the region. As an example, in 2024, the lot was the culmination of harvests from the following producers:

Teresita Martinez, 31kg
Hilda Martinez, 61.80kg
Rufina Ramirez, 66.80kg
Isabel Alvarado, 38.80kg
Catalina Castañeda, 37.25kg
Berta Garcia, 18.75kg
Jovita Juarez, 29.50kg
Florencia Garcia, 19.40kg
Carmen Juarez, 93.35kg
Bernarda Hernandez, 21.90kg
Elvira Garcia, 57.20kg
Francisca Garcia, 46kg

We hope this list of volumes conveys the small yields that are produced in this region. Across the 12 producers this lot comprises 521.8 kg total green coffee.

Individual Producers of the Sierra Mazateca
The producers in Sierra Mazateca all have very small and simple parcelas without names. These single producer lots are a result of significant effort on the part of Red Beetle to create more granulation in the groups offering; to incentivise and pay higher prices for the best quality deliveries from individual producers.

This is only possible through Red Beetle’s in-depth and direct feedback loop to producers for every sample received, providing physical and sensorial analysis of the sample, where that fits into their pricing scale and direct recommendations for improving the quality and therefore value of the coffee.

Finally, this program also requires tremendous amounts of QC. This takes place at Red Beetle’s newly constructed cupping lab, equipped with micro hullers, and sample roasters.

Ricardo y Ernesto Monfil
Ricardo and Ernesto Monfil Victoria are producers based in the town of Eloxochitlán de Flores Magón, or Elox as it is known locally. Elox is the main coffee hub in the remote Sierra Mazateca region of Oaxaca and the base of our operations in the Mazateca.

Ricardo and Ernesto have around two hectares of land under coffee which makes him bigger than the typical producer in the Mazateca who would have less than one hectare and a production of less than 100kg of parchment each year. These low yields are the primary challenge facing producers across Oaxaca and nowhere more so than the Mazateca. By working with single producers like Ricardo and Ernesto alongside small, community-based associations, we aim to open up access to the specialty market for producers in the Mazateca.

Their coffee is fully washed with the typical long fermentations found in the Mazateca, around 48 hours before being dried on petates, traditional hand-woven mats.

Malaquias Cruz
Malaquias is 28 years old, and has been working with coffee since he was 18. He planted his field himself when he was just a teenager, where he grows Typica, Oro Azteca and Caturra varieties.

Malaquias had been working in Mexico City but he recently returned to his hometown. Now his main economic activity is coffee and he spends the earnings on the wellbeing of his family, in health and education. He keeps 30kg of coffee for the family and also plants corn, beans, broad beans, pumpkin, and peas.

Abigail Cruz
Abigail is 34 years old and has been working with coffee for 11 years while also working in the city. She is working on her parents' field which they planted 20 years ago. The field sits at an altitude of around 1600-1700 masl with Typica, Oro Azteca and Caturra varieties. She keeps 50kg of coffee for the family and also plants corn, vegetables, beans, broad beans and avocado.

Tomas Jaurez, Pedro Anastacio, Maximiano Marin

Tomas, Pedro and Maximiano are producers that live in the San Lucas Zoquiapam area in La Cañada. Unfortunately, the only way to contact them is to go personally to their community with a translator because their mother language is Mazateco. This is a 4 hr round trip for the coordinator that is in contact with them and they haven't been able to go around. Hopefully we can get some information next time they see them!

Changing the world needs a powerful strategy. This requires that we make tough choices. Not just about what we will do, but also, what we will not do.