Honduras: La Alondra - January Pickings

This full bodied coffee is all chocolate orange. As it cools, there's a hint of caramel and on the finish are raisins and cherries which will bring you back for another sip.

Here's something you don't often get to experience: three lots from the same farm, same varietals, same processing – 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. This is the January pickings – bold and festive, all chocolate orange with dried fruit sweetness. We'll be releasing February (indulgent sticky toffee pudding territory) and March (creamy milk chocolate with a gentle fruit finish) over the coming months, so you can follow the harvest and taste the difference for yourself.

La Alondra 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 farm in Lempira back in 1998, he bought new land in Lepaterique and gave it the same name to keep the tradition alive. These days, his son Miguel runs things, with his three brothers all staying involved. One of them, Alejandro, is the reason we're drinking this coffee at all – he introduced us to La Alondra back in 2021.

The farm sits at 1,700 metres in the misty highlands of Lepaterique, just 30 kilometres from Tegucigalpa. It's an area better known for growing cold-weather vegetables than coffee, which made La Alondra something of a pioneer when the first neighbouring coffee farms only started appearing around 2000. 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 – means the coffee plants grow unusually tall. Even the Villa Sarchi, normally a compact dwarf varietal, reaches for the canopy here.

Around half the plants are about 30 years old, with newer plantings added gradually to renovate and improve the farm. The main varietals are Villa Sarchi, Caturra and Catuai, with smaller amounts of Bourbon and Maracaturra. 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.

This kind of lot separation takes extra effort at every stage – from the Girón family keeping pickings distinct, to San Vincente storing and processing them individually, to us cupping through each one separately. Most farms blend everything together. We're glad this one doesn't.

• Country: Honduras
• Department: Francisco Morazán
• Municipality: Lepaterique
  
• Village: Piedra Rayada
• Producer: José Hernán Girón
• Farm: La Alondra
• Altitude: 1,700 m.a.s.l.
• Picked: January 2025
• Varietal: Caturra, Catuai & Villa Sarchi
• Process: Washed

Medium Dark

We're taking this one to medium-dark, which means a nice steady roast through first crack (when the beans expand and release moisture), then coasting through what roasters call "the gap" – that quieter period where a lot of flavour development happens – before finishing just as the first pops of second crack arrive. Stopping there gives us the best of both worlds: enough development to bring out that rich chocolate orange character and full body, but not so much that we lose the dried fruit sweetness or start pushing into ashy, bitter notes. It's a roast built for comfort.

Tasting Notes: Chocolate orange, caramel, cherry.

Cup of Excellence Cupping Scores

• Clean cup: 6/8
• Sweetness: 6.5/8
• Acidity: 6/8
• Mouthfeel: 6.5/8
• Flavour: 6.5/8
• Aftertaste: 6/8
• Balance: 6.5/8
• Overall: 6.5/8
• Correction: +36
• Total: 86.5/100

If you would like to find out more about how we score coffees, make sure to read our blog post "What Do Coffee Cuppings Scores Actually Mean?" by clicking here.

Our coffee is roasted fresh and ships quickly – which means it might arrive a little lively. Here's the thing: freshly roasted beans are still busy releasing carbon dioxide (a natural byproduct of roasting), and all that activity can make your brew taste a bit sharp or unsettled.

Give it a few days to calm down and something lovely happens. Those brighter, edgier notes mellow out, sweetness develops, and the flavours you're actually after can really come into focus.

We recommend resting your coffee for at least 5-7 days from the roast date on the bag before brewing. A little patience goes a long way.

That said, this is just what we've found works best – not a rule. If you can't wait, we completely understand. Tuck in whenever you like.