Benjamin Paz Caturra (Espresso)

When we first visited Benjamin Paz in 2024, we instantly knew that we had met an exceptional coffee professional.

Benjamin Paz is a two-time winner of the Cup of Excellence in Honduras and is a key pillar in his community in Santa Barbara. Through his exporting business San Vicente, he and his team work with almost 500 smallholder producers to bring Honduran coffees to the world.

As a third-generation coffee producer who has worked in the industry all his life, he has established himself as a role model for Honduran coffee producers and is generous in supporting them with processing and operating needs. Besides that, he is a respectable leader who oversees the operations at the San Vicente mill and manages the operations of his six farms.

This coffee was grown in a farm informally known as El Brujo, which was a plant that Benjamin removed from this area of land recently. This farm is located in the Concepcion del Sur municipality in the Santa Barbara region of Honduras.

One of the key issues of this farm that Benjamin has been working on is regenerative farming. The farm used to be primarily a forest during the 60–70s, but after that it was abandoned for decades before Benjamin took over. The idea is to recover the soil over time by building suitable diets for the coffee plants. This is done through foliage and plant analysis to isolate the microorganisms the plants are lacking, and inoculating the soil with them.

This anaerobic washed process caturra is a testament to the amount of care and effort Benjamin takes in caring for his land. It first went through an anaerobic fermentation for 48 hours, then was washed and dried on raised beds. As an espresso, it is sweet and comfortable, reminding us of plum, nectarine, and brown sugar.