Carlos Roberto Hernandez is a third-generation coffee farmer and founding member of Cafés Especiales Mercedes Ocotepeque (CAFESMO), a collective of 280+ smallholder farmers based in the Honduran coffee-growing region close to Guatemala and El Salvador.
Their coffee farms are bordered by the country’s highest peaks, Cerro Pital in the west, and the Guisayote National Reserve and the Pacayita volcano on the other side. The mountainous topography creates micro-climates beneficial to different coffees, such as Parainema, Pacas, Lempira, Catuaí, Obatá, Colombia, and IHCAFE90.
Their members’ harvests are processed in their own centralized facility, which has a wet mill, drying patios, a dry mill, and a cupping lab.
Finca Miraflores, meanwhile, is Carlos Roberto’s 13-hectare farm nestled in a predominantly pine forest where cypress, guamo, and liquidambar also grow.
Through his farm, he has been enriching their family tradition of coffee cultivation by enhancing the approaches he learned from his grandfather and his mother with best practices learned from the dynamic world of specialty coffee.
For instance, his coffees are grown in the shade of taller trees — customary in specialty coffee —encouraging more gradual and homegeneous maturation of the cherries. This is a notion that would not have been approved of and much less promoted during the earlier generations’ time, because of their belief that coffee could only grow in full sun.
