Luis Delcid is a third generation coffee producer whose farm, Flor de la Peña, is located near the town of Las Flores in the region of Santa Barbara, Honduras. For well over a decade, the coffees of Santa Barbara have enjoyed international recognition for being some of the finest in all of Honduras, and microlots bearing the names of Santa Barbara farms and producers (Los Yoyos, Mario Moreno, Olvin Moreno, and Jeovany Rivera just to name a few), have been beloved standbys of Passenger’s Reserve Lot menu right from our start as a roasting company. We chose this particular lot, our first purchase from Luis Delcid, from a group of offer samples that we received from our sourcing partners shortly after the 2021 Santa Barbara harvest. While the catuaí variety is not always known for deep sweetness or notable fruit character in the cup, we found both qualities in spades when we tasted this catuaí from Luis’ farm, and we are very proud to share it at the present time. As with all of Passenger’s green coffees, we preserved the bright, fresh qualities of this microlot by placing it in deep freeze storage immediately after its arrival to our roastery in early September, 2021. At less than three hectares (approx. 7 acres), Luis’ farm is relatively small. While the vast majority of his land is devoted to the parainema variety, this lot was harvested from catauí trees that make up about 10% of the total number of coffee plants currently under cultivation. After the ripe cherries are pulped, they undergo 36 hours of dry fermentation, followed by 4 washes with clean water to remove all of the mucilage. This particular lot was then dried for 2 days on shaded raised beds before being moved to the San Vicente mill where drying was completed on patios.