Our Holiday Blend is for everyone, no matter how you celebrate. This coffee was crafted by the friendly faces on this bag, with the hope that each cup presents you with an opportunity to connect with the people in your life in new and meaningful ways. This year's blend delivers festive flavors from spectacular 100% organic component coffees from partnering farms in Guatemala, Ethiopia, and Nicaragua. 5% of sales from this collection will go to our origin partners at CODECH, a Guatemalan cooperative we have been purchasing from since 2017. These funds will provide organic fertilizer and training to 38 lower-income producers, enhancing coffee quality and yields while raising their income for the upcoming season. Holiday Blend is built around a coffee produced by members of Coordinadora de Organizaciones de Desarrollo de Concepción Huista (better known as “CODECH”), a cooperative Equator has been purchasing from since 2017. CODECH was established in 1998 when the Alliance for Youth Community Development teamed up with local organizations to create an entity that would represent the interests of the municipality. Since 2004, the group has supported local smallholder farmers produce and market their coffee. Over the past decade yields on the coffee farms surrounding Concepción Huista have dramatically decreased because of climate change, but training and systematic renovations initiated by CODECH seven years ago are paying off. This coffee’s balanced and structured flavor profile serves as the foundation of Holiday Blend. We then added a coffee produced on Suke Quto, a coffee farm located in the Guji Highlands of Ethiopia. Suke Quto is owned and operated by Ato Tesfaye Bekele, one of the people that helped to put the Guji region on the specialty coffee map. At nearly 550 acres, Suke Quto coffee farm, washing station and dry mill have become a force in the highlands of Guji. Suke Quto works with 171 neighboring farmers that deliver coffee cherries to the mill, and over 200 seasonal workers are employed to harvest and process the coffee. Their focus is on the production of environmentally friendly coffee in an economic manner that benefits the community, and to help people earn a living income from sustainable coffee production. This coffee’s citrusy and floral flavors contribute nuance to the blend and add complexity. We finished the blend with a natural, or dry processed coffee produced by members of Flor de Dalia, a cooperative located in Nicaragua’s Matagalpa department. The group was brought to our attention by a Catholic Relief Services’ Coffeelands initiative known as Blue Harvest, or Cosecha Azul, a watershed improvement program designed to protect and restore sources of drinking water in coffee growing communities through the promotion of sustainable production. Natural processed coffees are not pulped after harvesting and the coffee fruit is left to dry on the beans fully intact, resulting in sweet and fruit-forward flavors. We used a relatively small percentage of Flor de Dalia Natural to ensure that the flavors of the other components were not overpowered, but enough to contribute just the right amount of fruit presence.