Producer Profile

Guatemala LOT 17A – El Guachipilin
•    Farm:     El Guachipilin
•    Farmer:     Aimee Lucía Pérez Ríos

The story of Finca El Guachipilin,which is just next to Finca La Hermosa in Acetenango, Chimaltenango, Guatemala stretches back to the early 1900’s, and covers a lot of ground (literally). Mr. Mateo Mejia Mazariegos, who owned the massive farm of La Colina, was the first Guatemalan farmer to have both wet and dry mills on his beneficio. The farm was eventually split into five working sections, and in 1950 Mr. Mejia handed over ownership to his son, Jose, who seven years later passed it to his son, Carlos, who managed the farms until 2002.

The farm underwent more division as Carlos’s children each took a portion, until in 2010 a young man who is a third-generation coffee farmer, Max Fernando Perez Rios, acquired each part and reunited it to form Finca La Hermosa. Mr. Perez, who grew up on coffee farms in Huehuetenango, manages each aspect of each farm, from the coffee nursery and the planting of new varietals, to the harvest, the wet milling and the sun drying on patios, the selection of the parchment and the packaging at the farm. This attention to detail influenced this coffee’s placement in 2015 COE Guatemala.