Alexander Sabillon, Honduras

While history and tradition are the foundations of some of the best coffees in the world, sometimes it takes a young producer with a willingness to take chances and experiment to cultivate something really special. While hailing from a long line of coffee farmers in the Santa Barbara region of Honduras, Alexander Sabillon is the youngest of his clan and the first to produce coffee that is truly specialty. After aquiring a small 1.5 hectare farm that was completely decimated by rust four years ago, Alexander has started fresh, doing a great job with replanting and pruning and managing his farm with the best of care. While most of the existing farm is planted with the Catuaí variety, Alexander also has a growing plot of Parainema coffee.

Parainema is a member of the Sarchimor hybrid family. Sarchimors are hybrids of the Costa Rican Villa Sarchi variety and the Timor hybrid. The Honduran coffee institute, IHCAFE, created the Parainema cultivar by selectively breeding offspring of those two plants with the goal of increasing the resistance to coffee leaf rust and preserving the cups quality. In 2017, a Parainema won the Honduras Cup of Excellence competition in spite of the reputation for rust resistant varieties to produce lower quality coffee. This is Alexander’s 3rd harvest of Parainema, and he did a great job with the harvest and processing – he created a unique offering that we are incredibly excited to share with you!