El Mezcal is a beautiful example of how the specialty coffee industry can help uplift small scale producers from selling on local markets to being globally represented for their own individual quality. E-Cafe Chiapas is an organization of growers who started out as an exporter in 2007. This microlot is produced by 12 small scale growers, and includes a few non-family members, who had previously sold their coffee into a larger regional blend. E-Cafe hosted the farmers who contributed to El Mezcal at their research farm, Finca Las Chicharras, in 2016 to learn growing and processing techniques for specialty coffee. Then in 2019, the E-Cafe team helped El Mezcal build their own raised beds for drying coffee, as they were previously drying it in their yards. This is the first year that we’ve tasted this lot, so we can’t speak to how these improvements have helped the coffee quality, but we can say that the quality today is clear to see and taste.