Honduras: Katia Duke - Finca San Isidro Washed

Katia Duke's Washed Catuai: A clean, sweet cup you can count on.

This coffee doesn't ask you to work for it. The kind where the sweetness is right there in the cup - balanced, approachable, exactly what you expect from well-grown Honduran coffee.

Medium body with acidity that doesn't fatigue. The chocolate and caramel foundation is forgiving and consistent, while stone fruit complexity develops as the cup cools. No surprises, no funky fermentation notes, no need to "find" the coffee underneath the process.

It’s a Catuai varietal grown at 1300 meters in Copán, expressing itself the way it should. The kind of coffee that makes you feel confident rather than stressed about getting it right.

Finca San Isidro: When smart decisions create better coffee.

When leaf rust devastated Finca San Isidro in 2012, Katia Duke had a choice: rebuild the same way everyone else was rebuilding, or use her agronomy degree and coffee science training to make smarter decisions.

She chose Catuai - a varietal most producers overlook because it doesn't have the altitude pedigree of Gesha or Bourbon. But Catuai does something most varieties can't: it produces consistently excellent coffee at moderate elevations because it was specifically bred for exactly this context. The compact trees produce cherries that stay attached to the branch until they're perfectly ripe, which means Katia can selectively harvest only the best fruit. That's why you get clean, balanced sweetness without any harsh or underdeveloped notes in the cup.

The precision shows up everywhere else too. Ceramic-lined fermentation tanks that give her temperature control (which translates to more consistent acidity in your cup). Spring water infrastructure that ensures every batch tastes like it should. A washed process that's executed properly rather than chasing experimental trends.

And beyond the coffee: a school built on the farm, nutritional programs funded, 15-20 people employed year-round instead of seasonally. These aren't side projects - they're what producers who understand long-term systems do when they have the resources and knowledge to do it right.

That level of intentionality is what you're tasting. Smart decisions, executed well, creating coffee that just works.

A quintessential Honduran coffee, and your daily driver for any brewing method.

This coffee that adapts to your morning, not the other way around.

On weekends when you have time for a slow pour-over, you'll catch those apricot and stone fruit notes - the ones that remind you why you fell in love with specialty coffee in the first place. The clarity is there when you want it.

But on Tuesday morning when you're pressing snooze and reaching for your French Press, it still delivers. The milk chocolate and plum come forward, the body is rounder and more comforting, and you walk away with exactly the coffee you needed without having to think too hard about it.

Whether it's weekend ritual or weekday routine, this coffee meets you where you are. That's the beauty of a well-grown, well-processed Catuai from a producer who actually knows what she's doing - low floor, high ceiling. It's hard to mess up, easy to make great.

You'll love this coffee if..

You're refining your coffee skills and want something forgiving enough to succeed with, but interesting enough to keep exploring.

You care where your coffee comes from - not in a performative way, but because you genuinely want your purchases to support producers like Katia Duke who are creating year-round employment and building schools on their farms.

You want coffee that tastes like coffee is supposed to taste - clean, bright, and approachable - grown and processed by someone who really knows what they're doing. No gimmicks, just quality execution that you can taste in the cup.