About This Coffee
We first tasted this Gesha at the cupping table at the San Vicente Beneficio in Honduras during our trip in 2025, standing and tasting with Benjamin Paz and Kevin Bohlin. It was presented as a possible offering exclusive to us, and from the first sip it was clear this was something we wanted to bring back to Los Angeles. We're glad we did.
The farmer behind this coffee is Steven Murcia, and his story is one we connected with immediately. Steven was born in 2004, which means he's been farming specialty coffee since before most people his age were thinking about careers. Coffee isn't something he discovered, it's something he grew up inside of. His grandfather was a large producer in western Honduras, his father moved to the region to start a coffee buying and selling business and eventually acquired the land that would become El Mandarino through a trade for a car. The property didn't look like much at the time, but his father saw the potential in the location. By 2017 they were producing exceptional specialty coffee. In 2022 his father passed a plot of the farm on to Steven, and last year Steven prepared his first micro-lots entirely on his own.
He is twenty one years old. And this is one of the best coffees we've tasted from Honduras in years. Because it's early on in his production, he was only able to produce an extremely limited amount of it.
We're talking about 60 kilograms worth of coffee total, which means once it's gone, it's gone. We're already looking forward to deepening this relationship and bringing more of Steven's work stateside as he continues to grow, but for now this is what we have and we want to make sure it gets into the right hands.
El Mandarino sits at 1,550 meters above sea level in the Las Peñitas village of Santa Barbara, a region known for producing coffees with real structure and clarity. The processing is meticulous. Cherries are hand picked every afternoon, depulped the same day, dry fermented for 35 hours, rinsed four times in tank, pre-dried on raised beds with hand sorting to remove defects, and finished in a parabolic solar dryer for around 14 days. Zero shortcuts, zero defects.
In the cup, the Gesha character comes through beautifully. Honeydew melon and ripe pear up front, a bright Sumo orange sweetness through the middle, and a delicate jasmine finish that lingers long after the cup is empty. It's floral, fruit forward, and incredibly clean.
For roasting, we let the processing speak. The clarity that comes from 35 hours of careful fermentation and that kind of drying discipline doesn't need much help from us. We developed this one to highlight the structure and sweetness without getting in the way of what Steven built at origin.
This is the kind of coffee that reminds you why sourcing relationships matter. We're proud to carry it and even prouder to tell the story behind it.
