Mexico - Ozolotepec (2026)

Though better known for its excellent cuisine and production of grower-producer mezcal, Oaxaca is a stellar coffee origin as well. Some of our favorite lots come from the Sierra Sur, a region close to the Pacific coast where forests of oak, pine, and fir are frequently shrouded in fog.

Mexico has a relatively long coffee growing tradition. Like in Guatemala, its neighbor to the south, planters began to embrace coffee in the mid-19th century when the once lucrative market for cochineal dyestuffs collapsed. Initially coffee production was dominated by large estates in Chiapas and Veracruz that were established by European settlers, but the Mexican revolution of the early 20th century precipitated a shift in land tenure that would reestablish coffee as a mainly smallholder crop. In many cases smallholder families integrated coffee into their more traditional agricultural systems, and as a result much of the coffee now grown in Mexico is produced under shade in biodiverse, semi-forested settings.

The community of San Francisco Ozolotepec lies in a remote corner of Oaxaca's southern district of Miahuatlán. Ozolotepec roughly means "in the hill of the jaguar" in Nahuatl, the dominant language group of the Aztec Empire. Most of the farmers here are in fact Zapotec, known in the pre-Hispanic era as Ben 'Zaa, "the people of the clouds." (While the coast of Oaxaca has become famous for its beaches, the mountainous areas are better associated with coniferous forest and year-round fog banks.)

This small lot comes from five neighboring producers organized by Francisco Cortez, a former teacher with a deep familiarity with coffee production. They primarily cultivate the Typica, Caturra, and Oro Azteca varieties on about 1.5-2 hectares of land each. Each individually follows a washed process with 12-24 hours of fermentation, drying the parchment coffee in as little as five days on patios above their homes.

Oro Azteca is a regionally-specific Catimor introgression developed by the INIFAP, Mexico's National Institute of Forestry, Agriculture, and Livestock. Hybrids like this have become vital insurance against roya or coffee leaf rust, a pathogen that ravaged Mexico's coffee farms in 2012 and crippled its national output for several years following.

We sourced this coffee through Red Fox Coffee Merchants, whose permanent presence in Oaxaca has meant an excellent, steady supply of small lots from the region. While San Francisco Ozolotepec's very remote location and limited cell service have made year-over-year purchasing more challenging, we're excited to continue sourcing coffees from this excellent, inspiring region.