Coffee profile: Dominican Café La Cotorra

“Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back to, and reasons to stay” – Dalai Lama

Dominican Café La Cotorra is more than just a coffee farm; it is a home, sanctuary, tradition, and most importantly, a community. Nestled in the mountainous southeastern corner of the Dominican Republic, this wonderful farm is presently owned by the Francisco family. On small farms like this, it can be very difficult to generate a profit. Farms often use labor-intensive manual cultivation techniques and rely on local day laborers, who may split time between multiple farms. Despite the challenges, the Francisco family works tirelessly with the local community to make the farm both profitable and sustainable. They love everything about their farm — from the local workers who spend long days on the mountainside picking coffee to the critically listed la cotorra (parrot), who finds sanctuary high up on the farm’s hills.

Native Dominican parrots are highly vulnerable and rapidly disappearing. Deep in the night, thieves prowl the woods and capture parrots for trade on the black market. The Francisco family, whose farm houses a large la cotorra nesting sanctuary, requested we name their stunning coffee la cotorra, both to honor the beauty of the parrot and to raise awareness to its plight. In many ways, la cotorra symbolizes life on a small coffee farm — it’s beautiful and dazzles and struggles and survives with grace and joy thanks to a highly devoted community.

This sense of community and communal responsibility drives the Francisco family. They do everything in their means to keep their farm profitable so their community is better off and so that people (and parrots) can stay. Proceeds from coffee sales go towards much needed medical supplies and goods for communities within and surrounding the farm. Below is a short clip of a child getting their first wheelchair, thanks to the Café La Cotorra coffee profits.

Now to the coffee! Café La Cotorra is a high-grown (+4,000 feet above sea level), shade-grown, naturally organic arabica coffee. This brew is silky and complex with natural semi-sweet to dark chocolate base notes that close with hints of orange and lime. We hope you enjoy this coffee as much as we do! Click here to purchase this great coffee!

La Catorra farm

Café La Catorra beans

Reviews for La Cotorra
Bit O Java:  http://www.bitojava.com/2013/11/22/queen-bean-cafe-la-cotorra/
Boise Coffee:  http://boisecoffee.org/new-york/queen-hill-time-tested-roasting-meets-ordering-online/
Coffee Ken:  http://www.coffeeken.com/queen-bean/