Coffee around the world: Guatemala

Coffee is everywhere, but never the same. In this series we travel from place to place, discovering together how people experience their coffee moment: from morning ritual to social occasion.

A cup of coffee with Don Tomás

Don Tomás Ajú is 67 years old and has seen more coffee plants in his life than most people will ever know. He lives in a small village in the highlands of Huehuetenango, more than 1,800 metres above sea level. Here grows coffee that tastes like the place itself: dry, clear, with something earthy underneath.

His day always begins with the same ritual. A fire. An old pot. And the time to think of nothing for a while.

"I always drink my first cup alone," he says calmly. "Not because I don't want to see anyone. But because that first cup is mine. A moment of peace before everything begins."

Don Tomás has worked with coffee his whole life. His father did it before him, and his children now do it alongside him. The knowledge passes from hand to hand, from generation to generation, just like the taste of a good cup of coffee.

"You feel a bad harvest straight away," he says, with the calm of someone who knows what he's talking about. "And a good one too. You don't need to measure it. You simply taste it."

That's how simple it is. And how special.

Want to taste for yourself what the highlands of Guatemala put into a bean? Discover our Somewhere Soft coffee.