Origin: Los Lirios, Comayagua, Honduras

Producer: Leodan Bautista

Farm: El Caliche (5 hectares)

Process: Washed

Varieties: Bourbon

Altitude: 1700masl

Importer: Semilla with Sueños de Semilla

Roast: Medium

Notes: Apple Sauce, Caramel, Almond, Chocolate Milk

Transparency: This is our second year buying coffee from Leodan Bautista, we committed to a 57 bag lot at $6.28USD/lb + shipping & storage
Semilla's Farmgate price - 18,500 Lempira/carga parchment paid to Leodan Bautista
Local farmgate price (2025): 12,000 Lempira/quintal parchment coffee
FOB Price: $4.47USD/lb

Big Sipper X Leodan Bautista, Los Lirios

During our time in Honduras we spent a lot of time with Leodan, who, for a lack of a better description, was hilarious. We quickly bonded, taking cheeky photos and sharing our love of Toyota trucks( he had a super cool Hilux, and drove us around in his uncles land cruiser).

He is a young multi-generational farmer who has always strived to try and produce specialty coffee, but has constantly hit roadblocks along the way. He was slightly skeptical of the project to begin with, which is understandable in his position, but he stuck it out and brought even more coffee than expected to Jesus Galeas, who was managing all the sampling for Semilla.

We asked Semilla to separate out his lots so we could have his coffee for our Big Sipper, as well as his own seasonal espresso, Hilux. We doubled down on our commitment buying even more coffee from Leodan and other producers, including a 57 bag lot for big sipper.

This lot was built by the cupping team at Semilla (thx pat), blending all of Leodan's smaller lots scoring between 85-86, ending with an average of 85.5 for the blend. We're super happy with its excellent consistency, and find it hits our big sipper profile perfectly!

Sueños de Semilla, Comayagua, Honduras

In March of 2024 Kelly and I(Sonny) had the amazing opportunity to travel down to Honduras with Semilla & other roasters(who quickly became good pals!). This trip was an amazing experience, both of us had never visited a coffee producing region, and we were excited for it!

This trip exceeded all expectations. Not only was it an amazing, fun  filled adventure with trudging through wet farms & riding up steep mountain's on the back of a Hilux, it was also one of hardship & emotions, learning first hand the difficulties of being a smallholder producer in an economy that is constantly trying to exploit you.

We traveled across the Montecillos Mountain range in Comayagua with Semilla, Jesus Galeas, life long producer, and partner of Sueños de Semilla, as well as other amazing producers, such as Addonnay, Don Clementino, Danilo, and Jeovanny(our trip wouldn't have been possible or half as fun without these folks.).

Everyday we drove and met with different groups of producers, listening to their stories, hearing about their processing, and having them show us their farms and homes. This is an important part of business for Semilla, having a direct connection with as many of the producers they work with as possible. 

2024 being the first year of Sueños de Semila, majority of the producers we met were fully processing their coffee down the parchment for the first time. This is super important for producers as it allows them to capture the most profit for their product.

It's very common in Honduras ( and many other producing countries) for producers to sell their cherry to intermediaries, or coyotes, losing much of the profit gained by processing the coffee down to parchment. This is especially bad when the price of coffee is low, and you are a producer in a remote location(we went to some REMOTE locations.), making it difficult to transport your own cherry to town.

With this process, most producers selling to Semilla this year received double the 2024 national farmgate price of 3500 lempiras per carga of parchment, and way more than that if they had sold as cherry, which is impossible for me to calculate, as it would depend on what the intermediary or coyote would have offered them day of.

We left Honduras with a strong desire to better our own business, to do better by the producers we buy from, and to be able to buy more from them. We committed to many lots, including 2 separated lots from Leodan. We believe so much in what Jesus & Semilla are doing, and strongly want to support and work with the producers we met.

Now in 2025 we have continued our big commitments to buying from Honduras, buying from all of the same producers as last year, and increasing quantities! We love the opportunity as a young business to grow with along side the project, and can't wait for many more years of amazing growth and coffee!