Three Months, Three Flavours: La Alondra's Harvest Time Experiment

Here's something you don't often get to experience: three lots from the same farm, same varietals, same processing method, but picked a month apart. It's a rare chance to taste how time on the tree shapes flavour.

Same terroir, same hands, same care – just cherries at different stages of the harvest season. From La Alondra in Honduras, we're releasing three distinct lots picked in January, February, and March 2025. And here's the thing: they taste remarkably different.

The Flavour Arc

January brings chocolate orange with dried fruit sweetness, scoring 86.5/100. By February, we're in sticky toffee pudding territory with creamy caramel and hazelnut, hitting 87/100. March mellows into pure milk chocolate with gentle stone fruit whispers, landing at 86/100.

All three are brilliant. All three are unmistakably from the same place. But the progression tells us something fascinating about cherry ripeness and harvest timing that most coffee drinkers never get to taste.

La Alondra: A Century of Coffee, Reinvented

The farm has been in the Girón family for over a century, though not always in the same place. When José Hernán Girón had to sell the original La Alondra in Lempira back in 1998, he bought new land in Lepaterique and gave it the same name. The tradition carried on.

These days, his son Miguel runs things, with his three brothers all actively involved. It's a genuinely collective operation – the family home sits at the heart of the farm, and the decisions about how to grow, pick, and process are made with the next generation in mind. One of those brothers, Alejandro, is the reason we're drinking this coffee at all. He introduced us to La Alondra back in 2021 whilst working on his Masters degree, reaching out to our Green Buyer Roland for an interview about coffee sourcing. When Roland asked why he was interested in the coffee business, Alejandro mentioned his family had a farm. Roland, naturally, asked to taste their coffee.

What followed was one of those lovely coffee industry stories where connections stack up in unexpected ways. Benjamín Paz Muñoz, who exports La Alondra's coffee, happened to be visiting our Emma Street eatery. Roland, coincidentally in London that day, joined for lunch. They got on brilliantly – especially after Benjamín spotted our Mierisch Family coffees on the shelves. Turns out Benjamín and Wingo Mierisch are good friends.

A couple weeks later at London Coffee Festival, Alejandro mentioned he'd recently connected with an exporter called Benjamín. Roland's eyes lit up. It all clicked into place. Coffee really is all about relationships.

The Farm: Mist, Conifers, and Unusually Tall Plants

La Alondra sits at 1,700 metres in the misty highlands of Lepaterique, just 30 kilometres from Tegucigalpa. It's worth noting that Lepaterique is something of a non-traditional coffee region for Honduras – most of the country's specialty coffee comes from Santa Barbara or Copán. The area's better known for growing cold-weather vegetables than coffee, which made La Alondra something of a pioneer when neighbouring coffee farms only started appearing around 2000.

The climate here is distinctive: temperatures range from 10 to 22°C, with rainfall between 2,000 and 2,500mm annually. The property surrounds the family home and is heavily forested with native trees, including tall conifers on the upper slopes looking out across the valley. All that shade, combined with limited labour, creates an interesting phenomenon – the coffee plants grow unusually tall. Even the Villa Sarchi reaches for the canopy here, which is remarkable given that it's considered a dwarf varietal.

Villa Sarchi is a natural mutation of Bourbon, discovered in Costa Rica in the 1950s. A single-gene mutation causes it to grow compact and small – typically around 1.2 to 1.8 metres tall with branches angling at 45 degrees. It was introduced to Honduras in 1974 specifically because of its suitability for high-altitude conditions and tolerance of strong winds. But at La Alondra, with its heavy canopy cover and those towering native trees, even this naturally compact plant stretches upward toward the light.

Around half the plants on the farm are about 30 years old, with newer plantings added gradually to renovate and improve production. The main varietals are Villa Sarchi from Costa Rica, Caturra from Guatemala, and Catuai, with smaller amounts of Bourbon and Maracaturra dotted throughout. Coffee is processed at a small wet mill above the house before being dried and sent to Beneficio San Vincente for dry milling and export.

Why Harvest Timing Changes Everything

Coffee cherries don't ripen all at once. A single tree can have green cherries, ripe cherries, and overripe cherries at the same time. The harvest season at La Alondra runs from January through March, with pickers returning to the same trees multiple times as more cherries reach peak ripeness. And here's the urgent bit: once a coffee cherry begins to ripen, it becomes overripe in just 10 to 14 days.

This matters because ripeness is crucial. According to research published in K.C. O'Keefe's Quality Formula, the ripeness level of harvested cherries accounts for 35% of overall coffee quality. That's more significant than processing method, more significant than roasting. It's fundamental.

As cherries ripen, they undergo complex biochemical changes. Sugars accumulate – which is why ripe cherries taste sweet – and organic acids shift, affecting brightness and acidity. Aromatic compounds develop that only emerge properly during roasting. The mesocarp, that fleshy pulp surrounding the beans, is where much of the fruit's sweetness resides and contributes massively to the final flavour profile.

Early in the season – our January pickings – you're getting the first wave of ripe cherries. These tend to be the earliest-maturing fruit, potentially with slightly different sugar development and acidity profiles. The result? Bold, pronounced flavours. That chocolate orange character with dried fruit complexity.

By February, the bulk of the harvest is in full swing. The middle pickings often represent the sweet spot where trees have settled into optimal ripeness patterns. Our February lot shows this beautifully – those deep, indulgent sticky toffee notes, creamy body, layers of complexity. It scored highest of the three lots at 87/100.

March brings the tail end of harvest. Later-ripening cherries that have had maximum time on the tree, potentially benefiting from cooler night temperatures as the season progresses. The profile shifts toward gentler, more delicate flavours – that creamy milk chocolate character with subtle stone fruit rather than the bolder dried fruit notes of January.

The washed processing method used at La Alondra – where the fruit is removed from the seed before drying – means these inherent cherry characteristics shine through clearly. There's no fermentation or fruit drying to add extra complexity layers. What you taste is the cherry itself, shaped by when it was picked.

The Extra Mile: Why Lot Separation Matters

Here's what makes this particularly special: most farms blend all their pickings together. It's simpler. It's more consistent for buyers who want the same flavour profile year after year. And honestly, it's less work.

La Alondra doesn't do that with our lots. After all the pickings were delivered to San Vincente last year, they kept them separate for us to taste. We found great consistency in quality across all three months, but the flavour profiles shifted noticeably as harvest progressed. So we asked them to keep doing it.

This takes extra effort at every stage. The Girón family has to track which cherries were picked when, keeping January separate from February separate from March during processing. San Vincente has to store and dry mill each lot individually. We have to cup through each one separately, profiling three distinct roasts instead of one.

But it's worth it. Because it gives us – and you – the chance to taste something that usually gets blended away: the impact of harvest timing on flavour.

Tasting the Difference

January Pickings (86.5/100): Full bodied and festive. Chocolate orange dominates, with caramel emerging as it cools and dried fruit – raisins and cherries – on the finish. There's a boldness here, a confidence. The early harvest cherries announce themselves.

February Pickings (87/100): This is dessert in a cup. Sticky toffee pudding, masses of creamy toffee, dried fruit notes shifting toward raisins and currants, a subtle hint of ginger on the aftertaste, and hazelnut as it cools. The mid-harvest sweet spot, where everything just clicks into place.

March Pickings (86/100): Gentler, more refined. Creamy milk chocolate leads, with sultana giving way to peach and raspberry on the aftertaste. That late-season smoothness settles into something quietly luxurious – like the harvest winding down on its own terms.

All three are roasted to medium-dark, taken steadily through first crack and into the gap before finishing just as second crack begins. This consistent roast approach means the differences you're tasting come purely from the cherries themselves, not roasting variations.

What This Teaches Us

Coffee isn't a static thing. It's alive, changing, influenced by dozens of variables we often take for granted. Harvest timing is one of the big ones – and one that usually gets smoothed away in the blending process.

These three lots from La Alondra let us taste that variable in isolation. Same farm, same elevation, same varietals, same processing, same roast. The only thing that changed was when the cherries were picked.

And that changed everything.

It's a reminder that specialty coffee is agricultural. We're not dealing with a manufactured product where every batch should taste identical. We're working with fruit that ripens on its own schedule, influenced by weather and time and the particular microclimate of that exact week on that exact hillside.

The Girón family's willingness to keep these lots separate, and our commitment to profiling and roasting them individually, means you get to taste that agricultural reality. You get to follow the harvest from January through March, tasting how the flavours shift as the season progresses.

Taste It Yourself

All three lots are available now. You could pick your favourite flavour profile and stick with it – but the real experience comes from tasting them side by side.

Brew January and February together. Notice how the chocolate orange brightness of January compares to February's indulgent toffee depth. Then try February against March, feeling how that peak harvest richness shifts toward March's gentler, creamier profile. Finally, taste January alongside March – the bookends of the harvest season, showing just how far the flavour arc travels.

If you'd like to taste the full progression, use code AlondraJanFebMar at checkout for 10% off any or all three lots: January, February, and March.

Same trees, different months. Three distinct flavours. One fascinating insight into how coffee really works.