8oz bag of Atlas Collection Honduras Gesha
Finca Santa Lucia
African beds in Mierisch greenhouse

Honduras Gesha

$25.00

peach, jasmine, white chocolate

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The Atlas Collection is a line of limited-release coffees intended to highlight our sourcing values—quality, ethics, collaboration, and integrity—our tools for exploring the complex world of coffee. This exceptional Gesha produced by the Mierisch family on their farms in Honduras embodies the value of integrity.

Our longstanding and deeply collaborative relationship with the Mierisch family has opened up a unique opportunity for us to present this exceptional coffee, a Gesha from their Santa Lucia farm in Honduras. The cup profile offers layers of florals and tropical fruits with a complex sweetness. We taste jasmine, lime, white chocolate, papaya, and peach in the cup.

Throughout our long partnership with Fincas Mierisch in Nicaragua, we have purchased coffees from their farms every year since we first began roasting coffee. In recent years, the Mierisch family purchased three small farms in Honduras, where they have been working consistently on improving quality and productivity. After investing several years of hard work into these farms, they submitted a lot of a Gesha variety to the Cup of Excellence competition in Honduras and won first place with an average score of 94 points.

Many months ago, Fincas Mierisch began working on the lots they were hoping to submit to this year’s competition, but when the COE was cancelled due to the pandemic, they began to look for other avenues to bring these special coffees to market and approached us about a collaboration.

We’re proud to highlight their work and expertise, as well as to honor the mission of the COE of providing producers with pathways to a higher level of agency, by bringing you this delightful Gesha, which was processed from cherry to bean entirely by the Mierisch family.

  • Type

    Single Origin

  • Origin

    Rio Bonito, Siguatepeque, Comayagua, Honduras

  • Producer

    Fincas Mierisch

  • Type

    Gesha

  • Elevation

    1450-1900 MASL

  • Process

    Washed

A Note from Our Relationship Manager

From Amaris Gutierrez-Ray, Director of Roasting

In January of 2019 (which is the pandemic equivalent of ten years ago), I visited the Fincas Mierisch family farms in Nicaragua for the first time on a work trip with Joe. Besides being my first visit to a coffee farm in the context of my professional self, it was also the first time I’d visited a coffee farm in the reputable growing regions of northern Nicaragua. I’d seen coffee grown farther south in the country, close to the small town where my grandmother and family are from, on a volcano that grows close to Lake Nicaragua, but, even so, during that visit to the Mierisch farms and dry mill I experienced so many moments of admiration and awe while witnessing the expertise that is visible in everything they do.

Finca Santa Lucia

While I learned a lot of technical data about coffee processing, identifying the variety of a coffee from the color of its new leaves, and the rigorous data collection they start at the moment of reception, for me the most memorable conversations were with the Mierisch family about the people they work with. And it wasn’t just that they treated everyone like family—they did—but, as an organization, they were invested in an individual’s professional growth. If someone was struggling in a role, they asked why, in order to assess whether they would be happier in a different department or task. If someone was intrigued by the sensory analysis conducted in the Quality Control lab, they invited them in to learn how to cup. Haisell Beteta, the General Manager of Personnel of the entire dry mill, told me she’d worked in every single department of the dry mill for a good chunk of time before moving into her leadership role. And, at the time, she was participating on the national jury for Cup of Excellence (COE) in Nicaragua in order to strengthen her cupping skills. She shared that she was humbled and excited to participate in the celebration of the community’s hard work, a sense of accomplishment that goes hand in hand with COE’s mission to provide access for increased agency and equitable financial compensation for coffee growers around the world. 

Eleane Mierisch at the drying beds

When the Mierisch family approached us to ask about a collaboration in order to market high quality coffees from their farms in Honduras, one of which they had been planning on submitting to the Honduras COE before it was canceled, we were honored. This year we all felt the constraints the global health crisis wrought on our respective businesses, and we were already in a position where we knew we wouldn’t be able to be as good of a business partner to them as we would have hoped, and that we have been in years past. Together we found a creative solution to highlight their work, and also honor the mission of the COE to provide producers with pathways toward a higher level of agency, and we are bringing this lot of a Gesha from their Santa Lucia farm to our staff and customers. What is different about this coffee, and radical for our partnership in that this is something we have never done before, is that the Mierisch family owns the entire supply and value stream for it. They grew the coffee, they processed from cherry to bean, they organized logistics to export and import it, and they roasted it here in NYC at Pulley Collective in Red Hook. This, to us, showcases the complex skill set of the Mierisch family, and reflects our deep gratitude for the honesty and collaboration we encounter in our relationship with them year after year. With this release, we chose to take a step back in order to afford them as much value as possible since they are uniquely responsible for the quality in this cup.

Learn more. Download our Honduras Gesha Infosheet [PDF] >>

African beds in Mierisch greenhouse

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