Santa Irene Geisha

Santa Irene sits within a 129-hectare protected forest reserve in Cobán, owned by Dr Jacinto Estrada Zanabria. In 2012 his son Carlos took on 15 hectares of the land and began planting coffee, completing the block by 2013 with Catuaí, Geisha and Bourbon Cidra. Catuaí remains the backbone of the farm — this Geisha is one of the smaller, more experimental plantings, and one Carlos has invested in heavily.

Cobán doesn't behave like Guatemala's other growing regions. Rather than a clean dry season and rainy season, it gets a misty season and a rainy season, shaped by its proximity to the Atlantic. The local name for the fine drizzle that falls nine or ten months of the year is chipi-chipi. It makes for a long, staggered flowering, high humidity, and constant vigilance against leaf rust — but it also gives Cobán coffees their signature good body, delicate acidity and fragrant aroma. If you've ever wondered what a coffee region that feels like a wet English spring tastes like, this is it.

Carlos is genuinely restless about quality. He measures cherry brix before picking to decide which parcels are ready (18–22 degrees), runs anaerobic and natural experiments alongside his washed lots, and recently built a glass greenhouse for drying.

How it's processed

Cherry is picked selectively on brix, sorted at the end of the day and taken to the wet mill. There it's floated to remove low-density cherry, pulped, and fermented in concrete tanks. Mucilage is stripped by demucilager, then the parchment runs through washing channels that grade the beans by density before drying slowly on raised beds until it hits target moisture.