The Metro-Blog

San Isidro was founded in 1897 by Felix Maldonado Robles and has been passed down through four generations, remaining 100% family owned to this day. It is located at the foothills of the Lacandon Hill in San Marcos, a nature preserve for the national bird, the Quetzal. While this 1,048 Hectare farm is fairly large, the coffee production area is very small in comparison at 21...

This coffee was produced in the Caicedo region of Antioquia, Colombia as a collaborative effort between 20-30 farmers. Though the region is renowned for its agriculture, it suffers from lack of infrastructure due to its remoteness and drug trade related violence that ensued throughout the 1990’s. In an effort to rebuild, farmers formed co-ops and teamed up with more establis...

The Flanzer family began farming in the 1970’s in the Serra do Cabral plateau in the state of Minas Gerais. Originally planted for forestry, brothers Marcelo and Roberto decided to diversify their land when they took over management from their father, Henrique, in 2000. Coffee had never been produced in the region before so Marcelo and Roberto started with a blank slate. The...

With excellent growing conditions and a prevalence of sought-after varietals like Typica, Bourbon, and Caturra, Peru is poised to produce large volumes of high-quality coffee the likes of its powerhouse producers to the north and east, Colombia and Brazil. This lot was sourced through Lima Coffees in northern Peru’s Jaén Province. Lima Coffees is a young exporting company wo...

I first met Mokhtar Al-Khanshali in 2014 while attending my Q Certification exam at Boot Coffee in Mill Valley, California. Mokhtar, a Yemeni-American raised in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, was working as a lab assistant while preparing for his own Q exam. He had only recently begun working for coffee legend Willem Boot, and thus was brand new to coffee and newe...

Coffeehouses are seen differently by everyone. You might feel inclined to define a coffeehouse by what it serves. A latte, an espresso, a frappe, a smoothie, a cup of tea, or a cup of coffee all go a long way to define the values of its shop, be it specialty, commodity, or otherwise. You might go so far as to define a coffeehouse by its aesthetic. A fireside armchair on the ...