There are few companies that are as close to coffee as Cafeología. In southern Mexico, they work directly with producers, roast, cup, are baristas, and pass on their knowledge in their coffee school. The team around Jesús Salazar has created a coffee island that can be a model for the entire coffee industry. Details, precision, and patience characterize the work of Cafeología. We were on site.
The "coffee-ology" as its own field doesn't exist as such, yet it quickly becomes clear what it's all about: the totality of what makes coffee. It's a holistic approach to a subject that should encompass production, processing, and consumption. "Cafeología" is dedicated to this grand goal as a company and states that "harmony between the environment, families, and quality" are at the forefront.
The motto of Cafeología: We create the human, economic, and material conditions to portray the maximum expression of coffee and those who made it
What does Cafeología actually do?
Many who come into contact with Cafeología do so via social media. The Instagram accounts of the company and of Jesús (Cafeólogo) are a stylishly crafted diary of their work. The first physical point of contact is probably the cafés, with the headquarters in San Cristóbal being particularly noteworthy, as well as a small shop at the Tuxtla airport. At their headquarters in San Cristóbal, they operate a coffee roastery and a coffee school, where they train employees, coffee professionals, and interested parties.
On the roof, they have a drying facility for coffee cherries. Outside the city, they operate a dry mill, where they hull, sort, clean, and manually remove defects from coffee and export green coffee, primarily to Europe. In the region around San Cristóbal, they work in four indigenous communities, where they manage their own beneficios and offer producers workshops to optimize quality. This broad and diverse work has developed over the last ten years
A view into the dry mill, where coffees are sorted manually
In autumn 2022, I was on site in San Cristóbal, after we had been in contact with Jesús for three years and purchased two Natural Nano-Lots from Pedro Vásquez. I was nervously excited. Cafeología's media work is impressive and creates high expectations.
The Cafeología Café
In the café, I met Pablo Salazar, who manages the finances. The café itself is designed with a mix of 70s architecture with lots of wood, high ceilings, many plants, and subtle colors. The place itself radiates calm and invites you for multiple cups of coffee. The baristas are well-trained and take their time with the extractions.
Cafeología's flagship café in San Cristóbal
Guests choose between filter coffees with different point scores. The 85-point coffees are the baseline, followed by the 86 and 87 point coffees. The 85-point coffees offer lots of balance, soft texture, and plenty of sweetness. The higher point scores become more floral, fruitier, and remind you less and less of classic coffee flavors.
"It's all about the details," says Pablo.
He is the CFO of the company and only discovered coffee a few years ago when his brother Jesús brought him in for the project. "If we want to communicate details in coffee, we also have to look at it in detail." Details—a word that would accompany me throughout my days in San Cristóbal.
Pablo Salazar, Cafeología
There were the specially designed coffee cups that concentrate the aroma and make it stronger. There was the soap made from coffee by-products in the room, there was the calibration in the language of all employees, how they described the coffees. There was the same music in all rooms, there were the labeled cupping bowls in the lab, and there was the same high-level coffee quality, regardless of who brewed the coffee.
The Roastery
Right next to the café, Claudia and her team operate the roastery. They roast on a 15kg Giesen roaster. They roast one curve per coffee variety. The filter coffee roasting curve is their baseline, and for espresso they follow the same curve but roast slightly longer. They now roast nearly 30 tons for their own use. They serve five Cafeología cafés, sell on-site and in their online shop, and some coffee shops in Mexico itself serve their coffee.
A view into Cafeología's roastery.
The awareness and consumption of local coffee is naturally much higher in Mexico than in other coffee-producing countries. At Buna in Mexico City, for example, guests choose between different coffee regions first, then the farm. Actually, the way we know it from wine.
The Coffee School and the Lab
Claudia also manages the lab next door, where daily cuppings take place. Claudia also judges at the Cup of Excellence, the most prestigious competition for the best coffees in a country. The cuppings with Claudia and the team were very valuable because we were able to calibrate ourselves.
We wanted to learn from each other how we think, talk, and feel about coffees. This helps all of us so that we can communicate even more precisely in the future and Cafeología can find for us exactly the coffees we're looking for.
Cafeología's cupping lab
We tasted coffees from three zones around San Cristóbal. Cafeología's focus is on washed coffees and those fermented in the cherry and dried processed coffees. Carlos is responsible for the post-harvest processes, and I had a long conversation with him about fermentations and drying.
Carlos is responsible for the entire post-harvest process
However, Carlos didn't speak of drying, but of "dehydration"—that is, removing moisture. It seems like a detail, but that's exactly what it's all about. The way, the speed, the temperature, and the sun exposure with which we remove water from coffee has a massive impact on taste and storage capability.
The Drying on the Roof
Just outside my room were the first drying beds. Where other houses would have a balcony where you'd sunbathe and drink a glass of wine, Carlos and his team dry coffee cherries. A dream for every coffee person.
Drone view of Cafeología's roof shortly before the drying beds were brought up.
"Here we have total control over the process," he says, because he can check the progress of drying and fermentation multiple times a day. These are indeed lab conditions, but from them they can derive general recommendations that Diana and her agronomy team can then pass on to producers.
The Focus on Quality
In 2022, Cafeología processes approximately 70 tons of green coffee. That's about as much as we roasted in 2022. Of these 70 tons, they roast nearly half themselves, the rest goes to the local specialty market or for export.
Cafeología's focus is on characteristic, high-quality coffees scoring more than 85 points according to the SCA standard. Not all coffees from producers they work directly with achieve 85 points. For these coffees that score between 84 and 85 points, they have created two of their own cafés, the "Carajillo". There they offer specialty coffee that's somewhat more accessible, and this way they also create a larger market for their producer partners. Coffees scoring below 84 points they sell on the local green coffee market.
All producers receive this receipt, which certifies the quality of the cherries and defines the expected salary.
The strong focus on complex coffees is naturally interesting from a sensory perspective. However, it's worth considering whether this exact focus also excludes producers, and if so, how.
Visit to Aldama at the Beneficio Comunitario
We visit the Beneficio Comunitario. This is a collection point for coffee cherries. Cafeología built this station together with a local coffee producer. For this, we drive to Aldama in an indigenous community of the Tzotzíl, not far from San Cristóbal. Two hours by car or 30 kilometers as the crow flies separate the two places physically—but content-wise, there's a universe between them.
"I grew up in Chiapas," says Pablo, "and never had to define myself by my skin color. I'm from here. But the first time I was in Aldama, I suddenly was the white guy."
Aldama is located east of San Cristóbal in a region that had much sympathy for the social-revolutionary Zapatista movement in the 1990s. The history of the region is different from that of San Cristóbal. Rural areas are still characterized by strong indigenous customs, traditions, and values. In small communities, few people speak Spanish, and the communities tend to remain and live unto themselves. This fragmentation creates micro-regions and micro-worlds, so that Cafeología initially worked with three translators in the environment around San Cristóbal.
In Aldama itself, we meet Inéz Vázquez. She is the daughter of Pedro Vázquez, from whom we have already roasted two nano-lots. Inéz is a young woman who worked for five years as a barista at Cafeología, then roasted coffee, and today manages a collection point for coffee cherries. This fact alone breaks with many traditions in her community: as a young woman, she takes on work that had previously only been done by men. She manages the beneficio and thus not only has responsibility but is equipped with many rights—she decides which quality of cherries to buy or reject. At the same time, she provides feedback and conducts workshops for producers to communicate Cafeología's philosophy.
Inéz Vázquez. Producer's daughter, entrepreneur, barista, roaster.
"The beginning was a bit bumpy," says Inéz. But after three years, the number of producers supplying cherries to Inéz has tripled. The quality keeps improving, and this is mainly because of the simple, direct, and transparent way Cafeología and Inéz share knowledge.
There are no surprises for producers because Cafeología first communicates prices for delivered coffee cherries before the season and makes them public for all to see. What may sound obvious is simply not standard in coffee-producing countries. Often coffee is harvested without knowing what the equivalent value will be at the end of the day. This seemingly small lever completely upends an entire system.
But above all, it creates incentives in a region that is largely ignored by official Mexico. The recent history of the Zapatista region seems to be one reason why there are few state interventions or development programs to support the impoverished rural population. All too often, and also in this case, there are state pensions meant to support people but which in reality keep them still and in a vicious cycle.
In the case of the region around Aldama, teenagers receive the right to their own house at 15 years old. There are no building zones. Whoever wants to build can do so without major restrictions, regardless of where. There's also a state subsidy for this. Likewise, parents receive a state pension for each child. And this combination creates a cocktail where there are many young people in the region who have many children and live in their own one-room house. The money from the child pension often covers survival but not much more.
Coffee Quality as an Incentive
"This isn't a system, it's stagnation," says Inéz. No incentives are created to do anything. But in Cafeología's system, it's all about incentives. Aldama is located in a region of 1,800 to 2,000 meters above sea level. The region has little coffee rot because it's very cool. Many producers work organically because they don't even have access to mineral fertilizers. Varieties grow here like Geisha, Bourbon, or Java, which are no longer grown in many parts of Mexico because they're not rust-resistant. The foundation for high quality exists. But to really achieve it, it takes plant care and precise harvesting.
Claudia and Diana
Diana is an agronomist and supports all producers that Cafeología works with. I love and appreciate traveling with agronomists, asking detailed questions, and getting profound answers. Diana advises producers on how to design their farms long-term and sustainably, what suitable varieties are for new plantings, how diseases and pests can be prevented proactively, and how other useful plants can be planted between coffee trees.
What about organic production? "Step by step," says Diana. Mexico and organic coffee is its own story. Since the 1980s, Mexico has been one of the largest producers of organic coffee, which is primarily delivered to the United States. All of Mexico's coffee regions switched to organic coffee, but mainly focused on certification, not on plant care.
"Many organic farms here are broken," I heard repeatedly. Organic doesn't just happen. Organic isn't organic just because nothing is done. And this approach prevailed for a long time in Chiapas. "Whoever doesn't fertilize, whoever doesn't prune, whoever simply does nothing, they're organic," says Diana. But organic isn't about "doing nothing"—it's about working with the soil, with the entire farm system, and that requires deep understanding and lots of work if it's to succeed.
"We have to first show that we are trustworthy partners. Then we have to show that we need high quality. And then we gradually guide our producers toward more natural production."
Many organic farms in the region think that organic = doing nothing
Though it must be noted that the vast majority of producers working with Cafeología already operate in a very natural way, some even organically. However, there are also many bad and more recent memories of organic certification.
Certification for individual producers is unrealistic, especially if they're small. Cooperatives offer a path to certification, which in Mexico are often double-certified, both organic and fair trade. But a cooperative alone doesn't make a difference; it must be conscientiously managed and developed in service of its members. Too often cooperatives have failed because money was embezzled, because individual members' opinions weren't heard, leading to a loss of trust and many cooperatives dissolving again.
"Step by step. Rushing doesn't help anything. We have to create understanding, build trust, and then move forward step by step. We are still guests here." Diana, who is from Colombia, notices this triply. As a woman, as a white person, as a Colombian.
The Dry Mill and Export
Once the coffee is dried, it's made export-ready in the dry mill. It was the first time I didn't wear a face mask in a dry mill. There was hardly any dust. "We clean the hulling machines after each run," says Pablo. After that, the green coffee is sorted by density and size. They standardly repeat this process five times—I've never seen that before.
The high uniformity achieved this way results in extremely homogeneous roasting quality, since all beans can process the roaster's energy evenly. This year we purchased two nanolots from Cafeología. The coffees are brought to Europe via Belco.
We're delighted about this partnership with Cafeología. It's a pleasure to be able to exchange so broadly and deeply about coffee. You can count on us offering you nano-lots from the region around San Cristóbal yearly, and we learn together to know the region even better from a sensory perspective.
