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HONDURAS BARISTAS BRING COFFEE BACK TO THE PRODUCERS THERE ARE FEW PLACES in the world more beautiful than the lush and verdant mountains that surround Lake Yojoa in Honduras. At the base of the lake visitors can enjoy a richly biodiverse and tropical setting to view the almost 400 species of birds and 800 species of plants. But if you ascend the dramatically steep mountains into the misty clouds and fog formed from the largest lake in Honduras, you can find some the world's most unique and beautiful coffees. In my time there, however, I found that just as the environment and the coffees are rich with beauty, so are the cultural and social opportunities full of rich potential to impact quality of life. I believe this is true for the whole coffee community—including producers, roasters, and consumers— and it is this belief that guided my most recent visit. In the last week of October I had the privilege of visiting two communities of producers in Honduras: One of which was a special existing relationship visit in Peña Blanca west of the lake, the other a scouting and exploratory trip east of the lake in Siguatepeque, to start developing relationships for my new company in San Francisco, St. Frank Coffee. PEÑA BLANCA, SANTA BARBARA I first visited the Santa Barbara Mountains in 2011 to meet Sebastian Benitez, the producer whose coffee I was using for my barista competition performance which would eventually put me in the finals of United States Barista Championship (USBC) that year. My experience on that trip visiting the wonderful people at Beneficio San Vicente (BSV) had a profound impact on me, and I knew I would return. I first had the idea to return to while I was at the Specialty Coffee Association of America's (SCAA) annual conference in Portland, Ore., this past April. The idea was to serve small producers their own coffees using production roasts, the same way they are prepared at the Ritual Roasters coffee bars in San Francisco, where I had been working until deciding to start St. Frank Coffee. Some larger producers have the privilege of traveling The author, Kevin Bohlin, loves Piñona cappuccinos! Kevin, who will open his coffee company, St. Frank, in the spring of 2013, traveled with coffee colleagues Steve Ford of Ritual Roasters in San Francisco; Devin Chapman of Coava in Portland, Ore.; Colleen Duhamel of Café Grumpy in New York; and Me e-Marie Hansen of 49th Parallel in Vancouver, B.C.; along with filmmaker Brandon Loper, to Siguatepeque, Comayaga; and Peña Blanca, Santa Barbara, in Honduras to strengthen relationships with coffee producers and treat them to espresso drinks using the coffees the producers had grown. to the SCAA conference to build on their roaster relationships, but small producers cannot afford it and many of them have never even cupped their own coffees. When I shared the idea with my friend Steve Ford, the green buyer for Ritual, he immediately suggested we invite some of our other friends who work with BSV. The other roasters represented included Steve, barista Devin Chapman of Coava Coffee Roasters in Portland, Ore.; green-coffee buyer Colleen Duhamel of Café Grumpy in New York; and green-coffee buyer Mette-Marie Hansen of 49th Parallel in Vancouver, B.C. After determining the trip I got a message from filmmaker Brandon Loper in San Francisco. Brandon is currently producing a documentary on the global culture of specialty coffee, and he was looking to capture the specialty coffee story at origin, so suddenly my original idea grew much bigger. Our host in Santa Barbara was the wonderful Paz family that owns and operates BSV in Peña Blanca just below the mountains. The Paz family is leading the way in Honduras, finding and helping to develop amazing coffees from small producers and connecting them to specialty roasters for long-standing relationships. Fidel Paz provides direction for BSV as its owner, while his nephew Angel Arturo Paz provides expertise in agronomy and is the mill's cupper. Fidel's son Benjamin Paz provides the invaluable service of hosting and connecting with buyers and roasters, and is no doubt a major factor in their success there. (He also happens to be one of my favorite people.) On Tuesday we met up with Mette-Marie and went up the mountain to visit a coffee farm called Las Flores, grown by Cesar Fernandez. It was still the rainy season in Honduras, which can create difficult conditions, but we decided carry on up the mountain in four-wheel-drive-trucks. Devin www.baristamagazine.com 41