Angel Castro Garcia's Typica 🇲🇽

• Raspberry
• Cotton Candy
• Hibiscus

Variety

• Typica

Processing Method

• Fermented for 48 hours in wooden tanks
• Dried for 10 to 14 days on raised beds

Santa María Yucuhiti, Oaxaca, Mexico (1800-masl)

Sourced by Red Fox Coffee Merchants

Angel Castro Garcia produces coffee at his farm La Loma in the San Pedro Yosotatu area of Oaxaca’s Mixteca region, in the Tlaxiaco district. The name Yosotatu is Mixteco for "The sheriff who watches from the top of the mountain." To get to San Pedro Yosotatu we first have to fly to Oaxaca and then travel by road for 4 and a half hours. Most of the road is paved, with only the last 30 minutes of the trip on dirt roads. Angel has been working in coffee for over 20 years. He speaks Mixteco and Spanish and also produces honey. La Loma is one of the closest farms to the road in the Yosotatu community—just 15 minutes away. Angel uses mules to carry his coffee from his farm to the road. Yosotatu producers usually have their own processing plants at home.

Angel ferments his coffee for 48 hours in wooden tanks, then dries it for 10 to 14 days on raised beds. Angel usually keep a distance of 2 meters between rows and 1.5 meters between seedlings. Between each row, Angel places a plant that serves to separate the rows and keep the coffee trees apart.

Yosotatu is made up of 40 family members and neighbors who sought autonomy and independence from larger organizations. They’re very well organized and work together to schedule collection days and transfer the coffee from Yosotatu to our warehouses in Oaxaca. Aside from coffee, the community's main cash crop is lumber. Producers use native trees such as ice cream bean trees and pines to shade their coffee trees. These trees provide not only shade, but also various benefits such as food, ornamentation, medicine, construction materials, and water retention. Harvest is carried out between Angel’s family and neighbors, since most families' production is small and outside labor is scarce. Yosotatu is one of the areas that has been hit the hardest by mass migration of young people. When we visit this town, we typically only see children under 15 or adults over 35—young people between 20 and 30 have migrated to other countries or big cities in search of better job opportunities. We see this clearly through the ages of the producers, the youngest of whom are usually between 38 and 40 years old. Our work in this area started off with a very small group, who, sick of selling their coffee for subpar prices to coyotes (opportunistic intermediary cash buyers who are not quality-focused) and a single cooperative that was dominant at the time, sought a more stable and profitable dynamic. We tried our first samples here several years ago, and since then we've built a strong bond with more and more of Yosotatu's producers, helping them access better prices and more competitive markets. The relationship is built on a foundation of trust and traceability.