MEXICO - Guadalupe

The Flavour Profile

Some coffees ease you in gently. This one wraps around you like a warm mug on a cold morning — deep, smooth, and immediately satisfying. Mexico Finca Guadalupe Zaju is a single origin, fully washed specialty coffee, medium dark roasted in small batches by Nick in our roastery just outside Canterbury. It's the kind of coffee that earns a permanent place in the rotation.

At medium dark roast, the fully washed process really earns its keep. All the clean, bright clarity of the washing stations has done its job — removing the fruit, tightening the flavour — and what the roast then draws out is rich, rounded, and deeply comforting. Think sweet caramel, a gentle honeyed sweetness, and a smooth dark chocolate warmth in the background. The body is full and satisfying, with a velvety texture and a lingering, sweet finish that doesn't quit.

Drinking it black? This is a beautiful black coffee. The caramel and chocolate notes come forward cleanly, and that honeyed sweetness adds depth without any sharpness. It suits a slow pour over, a V60, or an AeroPress beautifully — but it's also an excellent cafetière coffee if you love a bold, full-bodied cup. Try it black first; it holds its own.

Drinking it with milk? Outstanding. A medium dark roast with this kind of sweetness was practically made for milk. The caramel opens up, the chocolate rounds out into something almost mocha-like, and the honeyed base holds everything together even through steamed milk or oat milk. Flat whites, lattes, cortados — it works across the board.This is a freshly roasted coffee in every sense — roasted to order by Nick, never sitting on a shelf, always arriving at its best. If you'd like it ground, just let us know your brew method and we'll take care of it. Buying a kilo? You'll automatically get 10% off.

 The Little Details

Finca Guadalupe Zaju sits in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico — one of the country's most celebrated coffee-growing regions, known for high altitude farms, mineral-rich volcanic soils, and a cool, mist-laden climate that slows the growth of the coffee cherry and concentrates its sugars. The farm produces a fully washed lot at altitude, where careful hand-picking and selective harvesting ensure only ripe cherries make the grade. The result is a clean, structured green bean with the consistency and sweetness that makes a medium dark roast really sing.

About the Process

The harvest at Finca Guadalupe Zaju is done entirely by hand. Pickers move through the farm selecting only cherries at their peak of ripeness — the deep red ones, with the right give when pressed. In a region like Chiapas, where farms are often steep and terraced, this is skilled, physical work, and the quality of what ends up in the bag depends entirely on the care taken at this stage.

Once harvested, the cherries are depulped — the outer fruit skin is removed mechanically to reveal the sticky, mucilage-coated parchment underneath. The beans then go into fermentation tanks, where they soak in water for a controlled period, allowing naturally occurring bacteria and enzymes to break down and dissolve the remaining mucilage. This is where the fully washed process gets its defining character: a clean, clear cup with no residual fruit influence — just the pure flavour of the bean itself.

After fermentation, the beans are thoroughly washed with clean water to remove every trace of mucilage before being moved to raised drying beds or patios, where they dry slowly in the highland air over a number of days. The altitude and cooler temperatures mean drying is gentle and even — no rushing, no shortcuts. Workers turn the beans regularly to ensure consistent moisture loss and prevent any unwanted fermentation at this stage.Once dried to the ideal moisture content, the beans are hulled to remove the dried parchment layer, then graded and sorted by size and density. Only beans that meet the export grade make it into the bag. By the time this coffee reaches Nick's roaster in Canterbury, it carries within it months of careful, patient work — from the hillsides of Chiapas to your cup.