18. Serrano Superior - Cuba Espresso

Cuba has a long and complex history of coffee growing. It's a central part of Cuban culture, with coffee first being grown on the island in 1748 by José Antonio Gelabert, a Spanish administrator who was in charge of the colonial purse in Havana. These early seedlings of coffee production were bolstered with the arrival of more colonists in the early 19th century, when French plantation owners were forced to move their operations from neighbouring Haiti after the Haitian revolution abolished slavery. Landing in the south east of Cuba, they set up several plantations where they employed their practices from Haiti to increase the productivity of Cuba’s coffee production, though not without human costs. Today, the remnants of these plantations are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Under communism, coffee production was nationalised and flagged, with the Soviet Union being Cuba's only international trading partner and domestic supplies sometimes getting so scarce that the weekly rations had to be cut with peas or chickpeas.

The vast majority of coffee is produced in the south east of the country, in the Baracoa region where French colonists set up their plantations, and in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, where this Serrano Superior hails from. It's a washed coffee produced by a collective of smallholding farmers, who primarily grow the Typica variety.

Relationship: New partner
Producer: Serrano
Type of farm: Cooperative of Smallholders

Region, Country: Sierra Maestra , Cuba
Altitude: 1500 masl
Soil type: Loamy sand
Fertilisation method: organic
Shade type: Shade grown
Processing location: On the farm
Number of varieties: Various
Harvest season: Jul-Feb