Dear coffee subscriber,
This month we are sending out three coffees from Jobneel Caceres Dios and his farms in Santa Barbara, Honduras. This area is famous for its many Cup of Excellence winning coffees and has been dominating the competition for over a decade. The main cultivar grown in this area is the Pacas cultivar. With it’s fruity character it has become the staple flavour from Santa Brabara. We are also sending out the Ihcafe90 hybrid cultivar from Cielito Lindo, which is from the highest part of Jobneel’s farms. This coffee has been among the top 10 coffees in the Honduran Cup of Excellence several times and is an a-typical IH90 coffee also showing a sweet and fruity cup. The last coffee is among the best coffees we bought this year, the SL28 that I planted wth Jobneel many years ago. If I did not know better I would easily mistake it for being a top quality Kenyan coffee.
I hope you will enjoy the coffees.
Nacimiento - Pacas (1st & 4th bag)
Flavour notes
Winey, forest berries & chocolate
Producer
Jobneel Caceres Dios
Harvest
February 2025
Origin
El Cielito, Santa Barbara, Honduras
Process
Washed
Cultivar
Pacas
This lot consists of four pickings from the first part of the harvest at Nacimiento in 2025. Some of the coffee came from the lower part of the farm, and some from the highest part of the farm. Despite it being from the first part of the harvest, which normally produces clean and sweet coffees with more muted fruitiness, this coffee tastes almost like his later harvest coffees, with medium-intense red fruit and winey characteristics.
Cielito Lindo - Ihcafe 90 (2nd & 5th bag)
Flavour notes
Forest berries, herbal & cacao nibs
Producer
Jobneel Caceres Dios
Harvest
February – May 2025
Origin
El Cielito, Santa Barbara, Honduras
Process
Washed
Cultivar
Ihcafe 90
Cielito Lindo is a small parcel of land owned by Extreberto Caceres Gutierrez, who is the father of Jobneel Caceres Dios, the owner of Finca Nacimiento.
Both farms are situated at the top of the El Cielito branch of the Santa Barbara mountain in Honduras, where Cielito Lindo is at the very top of the mountain, just below a forest reserve. The high altitude and moist, cool climate make this one of the most unique areas for growing coffee in Honduras. As Cielito Lindo is situated at the very top of this mountain, it has become hard for Extreberto to take care of his own farm, as he is now well above 80 years old. The only way to enter the farm is by walking up extremely steep trails, and the only way to get the coffee down is by using donkeys to carry the bags of coffee down the hills. For this reason, Jobneel is now taking care of the hard work on the farm, while Extreberto is helping out with other tasks like drying and sorting the coffee.
You might not know that we actually bought coffee from Extreberto way back in 2008 at the Cup of Excellence. I really loved his fruity coffee and was shocked when I found out that it came from a Catimor cultivar, the Ihcafe 90. I liked the coffee so much that I decided to visit the farm in 2009 to see if we could start buying directly from Extreberto. The intention was to visit Extreberto, but I was met by his son Jobneel instead, and that was the start of a long relationship and the work we have done together over the last decade. (Read more about that here.)
Nacimiento - SL28 (3rd & 6th bag)
Flavour notes
Winey, blackberries, blackcurrants
Producer
Jobneel Caceres Dios
Harvest
April – May 2025
Origin
El Cielito, Santa Barbara, Honduras
Process
Washed
Cultivar
SL28
SL28 is a cultivar that is commonly grown only in Kenya and parts of East Africa, but we managed to source some seeds in Central America and planted seeds with Jobneel in 2014. In 2015, Jobneel transplanted the seedlings to virgin land on top of his farm at the very highest altitude, and since then we have been able to buy small amounts of this coffee and have been able to follow the variations in quality from year to year.
The 2025 harvest is much more intense than previous harvests of this coffee. I suspect there is some prolonged fermentation in cool climates involved, as recently the coffee is de-pulped and fermented at the top of Jobneel’s farm. My reason for saying this is that the coffee is very intense, with loads of winey, purple berry and floral flavours that typically become more pronounced with longer fermentations in cold conditions. Still, this is a very clean yet intense washed coffee, similar to what you would expect from a Kenyan coffee.