Mexico Pluma de Oaxaca

Whole bean coffee

We roast to order on Mondays and Wednesdays and ship the same day. Orders will be included in a roast if they’re received by 4pm Eastern Time the day before.

Origin: Mexico

Region: Oaxaca

Province: Sierra Sur

Locality: Miahuatlan

Community: San Vicente Yogondoy

Producers: Multiple smallholding farmers

Altitude: 1500 - 1700 masl

Process: Washed

Variety: Pluma Hidalgo

Tasting notes: Apple, cocoa, praline

Thirty years ago, a sub-region of Oaxaca called Pluma Hidalgo was a better known source of fine coffees than it is today. Estates at lower elevations would buy the higher quality coffee grown at smaller, isolated farms up the mountain, and bulk them together with their own. This practice raised the average quality of the estate coffees, and being the gatekeepers to market access, the estates reaped most of the benefits. A complex blend of factors led many estate owners to abandon coffee production altogether, leaving the smallholders behind.

Concerted efforts by some coffee buyers in the past several years to connect with the more remote smallholding farming communities have brought along a resurgence of these exceptional coffees to the specialty market. Many of these producers are tending to old trees of an heirloom offshoot of the Typica variety, known toponymically as Pluma Hidalgo. Pluma de Oaxaca is our annual showcase of coffees that we think represent the classic Pluma flavor profile: clean, elegant, approachable, and balanced, the archetype of a “daily drinker”.

This version of Pluma de Oaxaca is a blend of coffees from multiple producers in San Vicente Yogondoy. We taste apple, cocoa, and praline.

More information about San Vicente Yogondoy from our importer, Red Fox Coffee Merchants:

San Vicente Yogondoy is a lush, densely forested community in the Sierra Sur region of Oaxaca in the district of Pochutla. The steep slopes where coffee grows under a thick canopy of native shade face the Pacific Ocean to the south and receive very distinct rainy and dry seasons with cooling Pacific breezes.

Getting to San Vicente Yogondoy from Oaxaca takes approximately 5 hours via road. That road is in good condition, so the real challenge is getting from the town of Yogondoy out to the farms. Unlike many other producing areas where producers live on their farms, Yogondoy’s producers usually live in the central town with their farms only reachable by 2-3 hours on foot or mule. During harvest, producing families usually stay in temporary housing on the farms, during which they have to move their coffee by mule or on foot over the course of several trips to the city.

Yogondoy’s indigenous Zapotec traditions and language are alive and well. In Zapotec, Yogondoy means "River of Bees," and many local farmers keep beehives for honey and pollination alongside their coffee. Many of the farmers in this group have younger coffee trees that were planted in the last 5 years and continue the tradition of maintaining almost 100% of the Pluma variety, a local mutation of Typica that has grown here for over 80 years. It thrives in these conditions, soil, and climate, producing spectacular cup quality. Many of the farmers are also under 30 years old, an encouraging fact showing that coffee has a future here. However, a percentage of young people are also migrating to the capital in search of better opportunities.

Another tradition still very present in the Zapotec community in the area is the practice of Tequio (a word from the Nahuatl language that means work or tribute), a practice of communal workshare that comes into play during harvest and in off-season renovations. 

Yogondoy has a high level of plant diversity on the coffee farms compared to other coffee-growing areas. Local producers use native trees such as Cuachepil, Cuil, and/or avocado to shade their coffee trees. These trees provide not only shade, but also various benefits such as food, ornamentation, medicine, construction materials, and water collection. For instance, the Cuil has leaf litter that adds a rich fertilizer to the soil.

The farms usually keep a distance of 2 meters between rows and 1.5 meters between seedlings. Between each row, producers usually place a plant that serves to separate the rows and keep the coffee trees apart.

Yogondoy is one of the few communities in which we see a year on year increase in both yield and quality. The producers here have invested a lot in their crops for 8 years, leading to production between 1000-2000 kg per hectare of dry parchment—nearly double that of many other Mexican coffee-growing areas.

Transparency

This is our fifth year buying from producers in Oaxaca through our partners at Red Fox Coffee Merchants. We wrote a forward contract in February 2024 to buy 20 bags of Pluma coffee for $4.95/lb EXW. This was one of four different lots that we approved towards that contract. We scored it 86.25 points.

Photo Credit: Red Fox Coffee Merchants