ABOUT THIS COFFEE:
Finca La Bolsa sits in a pocket between two mountains in the Huehuetenango highlands, up near Guatemala's border with Mexico. Bolsa means pocket, and that is where the name came from. Two rivers cut across the property and leave the working heart of the farm on what amounts to an island. That is where you will find the mill, the farmhouse and the patios where the coffee dries.
It was planted by a doctor. Jorge Vides ran the national hospital in Huehuetenango and bought the land in the late 1950s, putting in coffee around a full time medical career. In 1980 he built an elementary school on the farm for the workers' children. It is still there, still teaching, and the government still recognizes it.
Three generations on, the family works six farms in these hills under the name Vides 58, for the year it all began. His grandson Renardo Ovalle, who everyone calls Nayo, runs them now, and the first year he entered the Cup of Excellence, the worldwide competition and auction for the year's best coffees, he took second place in the country. This coffee was dried the slow way, whole inside its fruit, on those patios by the river.
