Why You Should Care Where Your Coffee Comes From

I answered the doorbell at Casa Colonial, the bed and breakfast where I host group trips, and saw two white-haired men, one with a face more weathered than the other’s.

From a sack, the older man unloaded eight kilos of roasted coffee, packed in a clear plastic bag with a bunny-ears knot at the top. He pulled out another bag, this one with ground up coffee, just one kilo, that a Casa employee had ordered from him.

We chatted. Don Donato had gotten up at 3 A.M. and taken a van from the Sierra Norte into the city of Oaxaca. His nephew picked him up. After dropping off the coffee, they were going to a doctor’s appointment for Donato.

I had just finished my second cup of coffee, and here was the person who grew it. That’s an experience you’ll almost never have in the U.S., or any country that doesn’t have a tropical climate.

Harvesting coffee in the Sierra Norte, Oaxaca. Photo by Lauren Cmiel