The Aguileras are a family of 12 brothers and sisters who are second-generation coffee producers in the West Valley. (Hermanosis used to describe mixed male and female siblings in Spanish, but literally translates to “brothers” in English.) Their father was one of the first coffee growers in the area and planted his farm 70 years ago: Neighboring farmers warned him that coffee wouldn’t grow there, but now the area is rich with coffee lands. His children, the Aguilera Brothers, work together to produce coffee: Most of the siblings own farmland, and they comanage the micro mill they installed with the earnings from their fourth-place Cup of Excellence win in 2007.

At first, their father was skeptical about the mill, but he was pleased by the results: Before they had the mill, the family was selling its coffee to a local cooperative and did not have any connection with the roasters who bought the lots. “No one ever visited before,” says brother Erasmo, the general manager of the micro-mill. “Now we get feedback, and we hear who likes the coffee and how we can make it better.” They have a nursery in which they are growing many different varieties, including Gesha and SL-28, as well as Bourbon and Villa Sarchi. They aim to grow “a balance of good-quality and rust-resistant varieties.”

This lot is a Gesha variety selection that is processed as Washed, using a demucilaging machine to remove all of the mucilage before drying.

Ethiopia Danbi Uddo Triple Washed Red Cherry Crown Jewel is sourced from family-owned farms organized around Testi Trading PLC, a coffee mill located in the town of Danbi Uddo near the town of Shakiso within the Guji Zone of the Oromia Region, Ethiopia. Coffee producers deliver their ripe cherries to the Testi Trading coffee mill station where the cherries are sorted and pulped. After pulping, the beans are fermented for 36 to 48 hours and then washed. The wet beans in parchment are placed on raised drying beds in thin layers and turned every 2 to 3 hours during the first few days of the drying process. Depending on the weather, the beans are dried for 10 to 12 days until the moisture in the coffee beans is reduced to 11.5 percent.  Then the beans are transported to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, to be milled and bagged prior to export.

Rwanda Musasa Mbilima Dukunde Kawa Triple Washed Crown Jewel is sourced from family-owned farms organized around the Mbilima mill located near a gorilla habitat in the Gakenke district of Rwanda.  Farmer plots are so small that measurements are based on the numbers of trees, not the area of land. Farmers who process their coffee at the Mbilima mill are members of the Dukunde Kawa Cooperative, which started in 2000 with enough funds to build one wet mill.  In the following years, the Dukunde Kawa Cooperative has built three more wet mills(including the Mbilima mill) and completed construction of their own dry mill. More than 80 percent of the cooperative workforce is women, and producer-members have used earnings to improve their standards of living with investments in livestock, access to healthcare, and programs to protect the environment, which won the SCAA 2012 Sustainability Award.  The quality of the coffee is also internationally recognized, consistently placing as one of the best in the Cup of the Excellence auction each year.