Mexico Muxbal Estate Lavado SHG EP - fresh roasted coffee, min. 50 g

Muxbal Estate is a large mountain coffee farm in the town of Unión Juárez, named after the Mayan phrase for "place surrounded by clouds".

The history of the farm dates back to the late 17th century, but it is not mentioned in detail until 1860, when the farm was owned by Matias Romero, a protégé of Mexican President Benito Juarez. 
Muxbal later passed into the ownership of the Brown family and then by marriage to the Ochoa family - who offered it for sale to Enrique Rodriguez (Maeggi's father). When young Don Enrique arrived for a tour, there was no road leading to it; he climbed a steep hill on foot and found a simple farmhouse, with chickens and pigs milling around and a coffee plantation in dire need of renovation. He was amazed.

He dissolved the business partnership to raise money, and over time replanted the farm and rebuilt the wet mill and drying house. In 1965 he embarked on road construction, a project that was to take 10 years and required the dedication of a dynamite-wielding road builder. At first the road could accommodate a donkey, later a car - albeit a small one with a lot of maneuvering. It has since been widened to comfortably accommodate most vehicles, but el Caracol, as it is called, is still as dramatic as the effort it took to build it (and Lombard Street in San Francisco looks like a winding lane next to it). Today, the farm offers both dry and wet processing technologies.

SHG - Strictly High Grown - indicates that the coffee was grown at high altitudes in excess of 1,300 metres above sea level.