Dana Montana is an Organic Mexican profile coffee. While it is traceable down to a group of producers, the specific group may change from year to year depending on availability, as well as our desire for a consistent cup quality. The profile was named after one of our traders, Dana, who manages sourcing and purchasing in Mexico. On her first visit to Mexico, our exporting partner Andreas Kassumaul of Exportadora Cafe California gave Dana the nickname of Dana Montana (Dana is pronounced in Spanish as Dah-na, not Day-na) after learning that she spent much of her life living in Montana and used to ride horses. Andreas then surprised us by having a special logo printed on the bags, which is a photo he found of Dana on a horse from many years ago. Since both horses and mules are extremely prevalent in rural Chiapas (both for transportation and moving crops), the logo and name stuck.
For the 2021/2022 harvest, Dana Montana Especial (P10876) is produced by the MOCABE (Movimiento Campesino de Belisario) producers, who are located in Motozintla, Siltepec, Chiapas. MOCABE started their activities as a small group of farmers in 1999 and established themselves legally in 2000. Their main goals were to access credit loans for production improvement and trade, receive better pricing for their coffees and create new opportunities for small coffee farmers in their community. Since then, they have grown to 501 member partners, who collectively have 935 hectares of coffee. The members of this group call themselves “Mochos” and the word translates to “there is nothing”. Story has it that when the Spanish colonizers arrived, they asked the inhabitants of the area for the name of the region. In effort to deter them from settling there, the Mochos replied “Mocho, Mocho”. Mocho people are farmers in every sense of the word, primarily producing for self-consumption. They sow corn, beans and coffee and have successful trades with other indigenous groups in their close neighboring country of Guatemala.
Our second lot (P10878) is produced by Mariana Luttmann on her Organic Estate Finca Aurora, located in Huatulco, Oaxaca. Huatulco in Zapoteco dialect means “Place where wood is worshipped”. Mariana’s farm is divided into 50 hectares of natural preserved forest, 70 hectares of coffee and 50 hectares for honey production. Caturra, Typica and Bourbon are grown here, with her coffee trees having an average age of 12 years. All coffee is grown under heavy shade and the tropical micro-climate, as well as the weather influenced by the nearby Pacific ocean makes this a really unique profile.
