OQ Coffee Co.

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New Crop Eco Cafe Station has arrived!

The first of our Direct Trade coffees, we purchased this micro-lot from EcoCafé, a Haitian employee-owned company in the mountain village of Ranquitte, Haiti. EcoCafé was started seven years ago as an agricultural program of Christian Flights International, and it has since grown into a wet-processing station.  The Haitian workforce that EcoCafé employees has, in that time, terraced surrounding mountains to prevent erosion, watershed depletion, and flash flooding and reforested much of the tree depleted countryside.  In addition to helping the environment of the community, EcoCafé Haiti has also moved use coffee to promote economic self-sufficiency and growth for Ranquitte's farming community.  The pulping station setup at EcoCafé employees a Haitian agronomist and three other coffee processors who offer technical assistance, resources, and information on improving coffee yields and coffee quality in the hope that coffee will become a fillip to the local economy.

We visited EcoCafé in August of 2010, where we were pleasantly surprised by the high quality of the lots coming in.  The quality owes much to the type of arabica coffee trees that grow in Haiti: Typica.  These trees were brought to the island by the French over 200 years ago and are highly prized in the specialty coffee world.  True to form, this Typica coffee from Haiti has delicate floral notes and nice degree of clarity.  The dry fragrance is salty and comes through in the cup as sea salt caramel.  The body and notes of chocolate predominate and, in fact, overwhelm the slight, round acidity so typical of Caribbean coffees.  The cup ends with a clean, short, and simple finish.

We have a small amount of EcoCafé coffee right now.  Although there will be a later shipment in March, not too much more is expected to come our way.  In part, the low yields owe to the cyclical nature of coffee plants that produce heavy yields biennially.  Moreover, several tropical storms made for an abnormal rainy season that took a heavy toll on Haiti by knocking off the flowers of their coffee trees killing the shrubs ability to produce cherry (and thus coffee beans).  The low yields also made shipping a challenge.  Missionaries hand carried this coffee back to the US, where they shipped it to us.  Unfortunately, that means some of the price we paid goes to shipping costs in the US.  Beyond that, however, all of what we paid gets back to a good business in Haitian hands.  That's pretty awesome.

Region: Le Nord
Nearest Town: Ranquitte
Harvest: July-Novemer 2011
Altitude: 900-1200 meters
Certifications: We visited the farms directly.  All the coffee is shade-grown using organic methods and inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, etc).  EcoCafé is also responsible for reforesting 60 acres of land around Ranquitte.

** Every order of 2 bags of coffee qualifies for flat rate shipping of $4.99...that's a $2+ savings on shipping if you're out of state! **