Producing Partner: Family Bonds

Producing partner: Family Bonds

This Guatemala Pacamara coffee comes from Family Bonds, a family business that includes a dry mill/cupping lab in Huehuetenango owned and operated by Danny Perez. DOMA has been traveling to Guatemala since 2010. We met Danny in 2017 along with his wife Madlyn, who is the head of quality control for their farms. We love working with Family Bonds because of their innovation, high standards, family history and community considerations.

The farm where this coffee comes from, San Antonio Chaguite, is a high elevation farm at 1900 meters above sea level. The farm, run by Danny’s father William Perez, took 10th place in the Cup of Excellence 2019, which is a testament to the years of experience behind each harvest and the rigorous quality control standards held at Family Bonds coffee.

Farming For The Future

Danny is a fourth-generation coffee producer, but what makes him inspiring to work with is how he pivots in response to climate and world challenges. San Antonio Chaguite is the perfect microclimate for coffee, but the terrain is tough to harvest and taking hits from climate change. Since the pandemic in 2020, it has been increasingly hard for Danny to find the seasonal labor to harvest coffee grown in high mountain farms like this one.

To evolve with the times, Danny introduced a fully-irrigated, flat farm in the Jalapa region of Guatemala. Irrigated farms are seen in places like Brazil, but pretty unheard of in Guatemala. He planted several varieties of coffee in wide rows, so fewer workers would be needed to harvest the coffee. That way, workers get paid more without having to hike up extreme slopes during harvest season. It’s an inspired and modern approach to coffee farming in Guatemala.

Direct Trade

We have purchased coffee direct from Danny since 2017. (That includes buying coffee through the pandemic, when many buyers dropped out and left coffee farmers reeling to cover their livelihood.) Our goal with all of our direct relationships is to purchase a range of coffees from each partner, every year, to keep coffee farming sustainable for the producer.

We're on a name-to-name basis with Danny and Madlyn, and have enjoyed keeping in touch through the years. We received our first coffees from Danny’s new farm this year and look forward to working with Family Bonds as they continue to produce excellent coffee.

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