What Makes Our Mexico Pluma Hidalgo So Special?
As many of you know, coffee is classified as a fruit. Coffee “beans” aren’t beans at all; they’re pits from a coffee cherry which are harvested by depulping the cherry, washing the seed, and drying the seed. These tiny little coffee cherry seeds are eventually shipped across the world where they’re roasted and prepared to their final form; roasted coffee beans.
Like all fruits classified under angiosperms (flowering plants that bear fruit), coffee has hundreds of varieties that make each plant unique. Just like an apple tree can be a Fuji Apple Tree or a Gala Apple Tree, so can a coffee shrub be a Typica Coffee Shrub or a Caturra coffee shrub. We’ll have future blog posts more about this topic, but in the meantime, you can learn more about coffee varieties here.
Our Mexico Oaxaca Peñas Negras is a very rare, old school variety called “Pluma Hidalgo.” It’s a direct descendant of one of the very first original varieties called “Typica,” which could be considered the “mother” variety to most of the coffees we drink today. Before we get into the specifics of Pluma, it’s important to note that coffee isn’t native to Mexico. It was introduced in the 17th century by Spanish traders and merchants who brought coffee to several areas around Central America and South America.
Most of the coffee brought to the Americas (which was undoubtedly stolen from Africa) was Typica or Bourbon varieties; original varieties that were mostly grown in Africa. Pluma Hidalgo became it's own variety after it underwent several decades of natural selection, undergoing the arid mornings and the cool afternoon breezes in the Sierra Madre de Sur mountain range. When Typica was first introduced to Peñas, Mexican farmers noticed over time that the shrub exhibited different growing characteristics, higher yields, and it tasted better than the original Typica shrubs planted years before! Mexican farmers dubbed this new Typica variety “Pluma Hidalgo,” after the feather-shaped clouds that form over the mountain ranges. And from one of the fathers of Mexican Independence, the priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. To this day, Pluma Hidalgo is excluvie to the mountain town of Peñas Negras. This is because the coffee evolves to the terroir of the Americas; a far cry from their African and Asian homes.
One Plumas Hidalgo was identified to be different from its Typica mother, Peñas Negras had been a prime area for coffee cultivation Plumas. However, this became short-lived. By 1854, farms had become monopolized by large agriculture corporations. Huge, lower-middle elevation coffee farms ruled the territory, buying coffee grown by small-scale farmers at higher elevations and blending them into their own bulk coffee harvests, undifferentiated despite their superior quality. This was done to monopolize the market and get the most cash from all the coffee in the region combined.
In some cases, in cooperatives and joint-business ventures, this method benefits small-scale farmers tremendously. But in the case of Pluma, it was extremely prohibitive to the farmers. Things started to shift with globalization. In the late 80s and early 90s, Pluma gained a widespread reputation for producing quality coffee. This, combined with factors including low market pricing and coffee leaf rust (known as Roya), caused these lower-middle elevation holders to abandon coffee for more lucrative ventures such as cochinilla farming for scarlet dye production.
Despite the change in the labor shift, Peñas Negras continued to persist forward with coffee cultivation. In the last 50 years, Pluma’s coffee production has shifted from the hands of large estates into the hands of local smallholder farmers. Nowadays, Pluma is almost exclusively the province of smallholders with farms averaging just 1-2 hectares. And the high-quality coffee combined with the exclusivity and low quantity has made Pluma Hidalgo one of the most sought out varieties around the world. The outstanding flavor profile combined with the consistent quality has made the coffee in Peñas Negras one of the highest quality coffees in the world.
The name “Pluma Hidalgo” comes from the clouds that gather at the mountain peaks – particularly in the afternoon as warm coastal air hits the cooler mountain climates. These clouds take the form of a feather. Hidalgo comes from one of the fathers of Mexican Independence, the priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla.
Over the last couple of years, coffee buyers have been attracted to the Pluma variety and are ready to buy them at viable prices. The farmers are now able to dictate their prices and gain access to new pathways to finance and reinvest in their financial success.
We’re so excited to have been able to find this amazing coffee with the help of Red Fox Coffee Importers. It’s been one of the best-tasting coffees we’ve tried. So what are you waiting for? Grab yourself a bag today!
