Suffolk coffee roaster and tea smith Rob Butterworth, based in Bury St Edmunds, explores Mexico

Mexico . . . the next big thing?

This month, I visited a country whose coffee has only recently been added to our inventory – Mexico.

It seems that in the last couple of years, Mexico has enjoyed a rise in popularity for a number of reasons.

Staying open in lockdown, Mexico enjoyed a new wave of tourism by people who may not otherwise visit.

With Asia in lockdown, many visited the Central American country instead and social media became awash with photos of beautiful beaches, well-crafted delicious food and incredible art and culture.

Last year also saw Mexico achieve greatness in the highly-prized coffee competition, Cup of Excellence.

This competition is held in many coffee growing countries across the world.

Its aim is to showcase the best coffees in a country and ultimately, through rigorous tasting by highly-trained tasters, to find a ‘grand winner’ across the globe. 2022 saw a Mexican coffee win the world title.

I wanted to find out more about the climate, the people and one of the areas I’d bought coffee from. La Cañada is a small region within Oaxaca (wa.hack.a) state not far from the state boundary with Veracruz.

The most direct route would be to fly to Oaxaca City from Mexico City, but in true Butterworth style I decided I would drive a 1,000-mile round trip in an old 2000 Nissan Frontier pick-up.

The route I took saw me start in the Pacific coastal town of Puerto Escondido, drive across the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains, via Pluma Hidalgo, San Jose del Pacifico, Oaxaca City, and eventually into Huautla de Jiménez, where all the coffee grown in this region is organic.

In Huautla, I met with Maricela Esperon who is currently harvesting her crop of coffee and dry processing the cherries.

Maricela has only in recent years made a name for herself in Mexican speciality coffee as previously her coffee was sold as part of a larger batch and shipped as a commodity.

She travelled to Mexico’s major cities to attend coffee competitions to try to meet quality buyers who would give her a better price for her coffee.

She eventually came across our Mexico partner, who not only bought her coffee directly from her to sell to international markets as her own coffee, but helped her understand better the processing methods and rigorous work needed to produce better quality to in turn achieve even higher prices.

Today she is the only one in her predominantly male coffee growing community that processes her coffee, honey and natural and has achieved notoriety by winning many local coffee quality competitions.

I hope to have some of her coffee in our inventory later this year. See our Instagram, Facebook or YouTube for short videos of this trip.

Butterworth & Son coffee roasters and tea smiths are based on Moreton Hall, Bury St Edmunds.

Owner Rob Butterworth’s job takes him around the world visiting coffee farms to source great coffees.