Caballero a six year relationship.
Together Marysabel Caballero and her husband Moises Herrera run Caballero, which consists of about 200 hectares of coffee farms and a dry mill called Xinacla.
History and consistency
Marysabel Caballero, who inherited the farms from her parents is largely responsible for overseeing and managing the farms and the people who work on them and Moises, with his background in engineering is responsible for running the mill and innovating processes therein. We’ve worked with Marysabel and Moises for six years. We’ve pretty much always had a coffee from them on our list and about three years ago we started using lots from their farms as one of our key Unit Fourteen coffees.
Caballero primarily produces Catuai, and they do so with amazing consistency, coffees that are very clean, have a great nutty caramel flavour, some plummy red fruit a little bit winey.
They’re so much more than a supplier, they are very much a partner. A partnership where we can have very real and open conversations and one that we see continuing for a long time.
From London to Paris, A Tale of Trade Show Bonding
We’ve been lucky enough to spend time together at various coffee trade shows, in London, in Amsterdam, in Berlin and in Paris. I’ve also visited their farm and we were lucky enough to host them here in Bath which was really special, it was the first time one of our producer partners visited us and it really felt like an important moment in our business.
Marysabel has put in so much work, it’s very inspirational. It’s rare to have such a large farming business run by a woman in Honduras and she runs the farm in such an amazing way, they’ve won Cup of Excellence multiple times, they have all the same pickers year in year out, she provides schooling, nursery and day care for their families. They really provide the full package and you know by buying coffee from them that not only is the coffee going to be fantastic but everything behind it will be fantastic.
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La Tina one of their 30+ farms ![]()
Moises showing us a tree that has been stumped to promote new growth ![]()
Coffee blossom ![]()
The mill at Xinacla
Farm care and management
Picking is something that’s taken very seriously at Caballero’s farms, their pickers are paid above the odds and are employed throughout the year rather than just during the growing season. This has the twofold benefit of offering stable employment to the pickers and means they have the workforce to do labour intensive tasks like remove weeds by hand rather than using herbicides.
The pickers are trained to sort the best cherries as they pick them, they’re given cherry bags with two pockets one from the best ripe cherries and one for defective cherries Marysabel believes that coffee quality is at its peak when it is picked, through careful processing that quality can be maintained but never improved. It shows the humility of her approach, that her best possible impact on the coffee is to not ruin it. Marysabel and Moises are both extremely humble, they’re running a very successful business but they’re running it out of passion and love for coffee.