A few years ago Jobneel Caceres Dios bought a small piece of land in an area not too far away from his first farm Finca Nacimiento that should be well known among our followers. He wanted to plant more coffee and different rare cultivars like Geisha. This year is the fourth year he was able to produce Geisha coffee from this new farm and the quality is (as expected) getting slightly better every year.
Although it is not as expressive as the Geisha coffees we buy from Finca el Puente further south in Honduras, this is still a delicious coffee with delicate and subtle floral and fruity flavours.
This particular lot was processed with a slightly different protocol than his Pacas coffees from Nacimiento. Last year we asked Jobneel to avoid de-pulping the cherries right after they were picked and instead let the coffee cherries rest over night and to de-pulp the cherries the following morning. This means the coffee cherries will start a slight fermentation prior to being de-pulped and it also means the parchment coffee is dry-fermented in a tank for 24 hours before washing. This has added a more intense fruity character to the coffee without it being overly fermented in any ways.
However, during my visit in march 2025, I realised that Jobneel had built a new wet mill by his house, which is situated at lower altitude than his farms. This meant the fermentation of the coffee was a lot faster due to the hotter climate. I realised that the protocol we had agreed upon was a bit risky as the coffees that were processed in the new mill tasted too much of ferment to my taste. Therefore I asked Jobneel to ferment the coffee from Vikingo like they do in Ethiopia, which means it ferments slowly while it is submerged in cold water. This prolongs the fermentation but ensures it ferments at lower temperatures which we have found to taste better.
The result is a cleaner and more crisp coffee with delicate herbal, floral and citrus notes.
We are still working hard to improve this coffee for future harvest and El Vikingo has been chosen as the test plot for our Biological farming trials that we are conducting together with Biofilia.
