Background
The Sanchez family has owned the Finca San José Ocaña for over 110 years, based in the region of San Juan Sacatepequez. San Jose Ocaña has always been a sustainable agricultural operation, though it started mainly as forestry farm management before evolving to be an arabica coffee producing farm, serving only the prime specialty coffee market. This is mainly as result of its high altitude, good clayish soils and varietals.
The farmers at San José Ocaña believe that every coffee bean coming out of the farm must have the best quality possible, and be produced sustainably. Today, some forestry still goes on within the estate. All areas that are not exclusively coffee are filled with both planted and native forests to promote bio-diversity.
From Javier Gutiérrez Abril, founder of Caribbean Goods:
As many of you know, I was born and raised in Guatemala. When I was five, my family signed me to a private school (Colegio Metropolitano). In Guatemala, private institutions run from 4 to 18 years old; you do all your education in the same institution. I spent thirteen years of my life with the same cohorts, and it was small. We were 50 children altogether. Funny enough, several of my classmates were coffee farm owners; I had no idea I was growing up with my future suppliers. Cristián Sanchez was one of my first friends; we both grew up in the city (which was 45 minutes away from our school), so we were the last kids dropped by the bus. We bonded, played on the soccer team, had lunch at each other’s houses hundreds of times, and were good friends. Cristián is the second son of Guillermo Sanchez, the fifth generation of coffee growers and the owner of San José Ocaña. His family owns several businesses in the area; whenever a big family owns several companies (including a coffee farm), they assign a family member to run the farm. In his family, Guillermo runs the family farm. Guillermo is also a board member of ANACAFE, the Guatemalan coffee association. Their coffee is highly traded in Asia, especially in Japan.