CHRISTMAS MEXICOMARICELA ESPERÓN

About Maricela Esperón

Maricela Esperón stands out for many reasons:
· she is a woman producer who fought for land ownership. She nows owns 7 plots of lands for a total of 5 hectares and leads a healthy family business, in a highly macho culture.
· she is young—early 30s—and despite having first emigrated to the big city for a few years she decided to come back to the farm and now is fully dedicated to coffee production. However she wouldn’t settle for comercial coffee productionÊ and sale, and actively looked for a way to add value to her coffee. Maricela met the Ensambles team in 2017 at a local coffee competition which sparked her interest for specialty coffee.
· She produces natural process coffees in La Mazateca, a region of Oaxaca known for its cold tempartures and frequent rain, making the drying very challenging. 99% of producers in this region choose washed coffees, but Maricela decided to go against the mainstream way—90% of her crop is natural process coffee. In addition to a state of the art drying structure on shaded raised beds, Maricela and her family put enormous amounts of care into the drying, for example putting the drying cherries in bags into their house every night so the dew wouldn’t affect them, and lay them on the beds anew the following day.
· She invests in farm renovation in order to optimize yields, and nurture her own nursery with seeds of typica and mundo novo from her best plants.