I was head over heels. Something about that bright, mellow character with an alluring, almost mischievous charm got me. It was love at first sight—or sip, rather. I’ll never forget the moment I met the coffee from La Bendición. My matchmaker was Olga, the exporter who’d long been my go-to connection in Guatemala. “There’s a grower I want you to meet,” she said. “You’ll love wha t he makes, Kentaro.” I couldn’t refuse that kind of invitation, obviously, so I did a blind cupping of her recommendation with cups of coffee from several different growers and farms. Once I’d tasted them all, it hardly took me any time to pick a favorite—the one that I’d awarded 90 points, a score that you only find among top finishers in Cup of Excellence (COE) tasting competitions. I turned to Olga and said, “Where can I get these? They’re delicious!” Olga looked at me with a hint of knowing satisfaction in her eyes. “I knew you’d like them!” Olga said.

The beans belonged to a man named Roger, the grower she’d been so eager to introduce me to. Roger’s farm, La Bendición, is in La Libertad, an area of Guatemala that lies near the Mexican border, far from the capital city of Guatemala City. It’s one of the most prominent coffee-growing regions in the whole country, home to numerous COE prize-winning farms. There’s El Injerto, for example, which has garnered an almost legendary reputation for its near-constant presence in COE competitions—and La Bendición sits right next door to that world-famous farm. Roger bought the land for his farm from the owner at El Injerto, actually. You couldn’t ask for a much better location: operating shoulder to shoulder with a throng of premium-quality farms means that the natural conditions are ideal for great coffee. I got the feeling, though, that there was more to Roger’s exquisite beans than just a favorable environment.

Originally a schoolteacher, Roger decided to switch jobs and make his foray in the coffee business when he was 40. He started out as a dealer in coffee cherries,Eventually, he opened his own farm on a little plot of land, gradually bought more parcels, and kept planting more coffee trees. Roger’s a teacher through and through—that part of him hasn’t changed, apparently. He’s a thoroughly decent person, serious and sensible about his work. On the flipside, he’s not your typical businessperson; it’s hard to see him as someone with a natural knack for sales. When you pay his farm a visit, he’s always a man of few words. He’s so reticent that whatever he does say to you sticks in your mind. “I took my family to the United States a while back,” he once told me as he took out an album of pictures from the trip. That’s when his wife, probably knowing that Roger wouldn’t be talking much, took over on conversation duty. I couldn’t help but smile as she worked so hard to cover for her husband’s naturally reserved disp

The thing about coffee is that it can be so unpredictable; beans from neighboring farms in the same natural conditions often taste completely different. The coffee from El Injerto is delicious, of course, but there’s something about Roger’s beans that can send people head over heels. It might be how the wind blows at La Bendición. It might be a slight difference the angle of the sun. The natural conditions are almost exactly the same, though. When you see Roger go about his work, you get the feeling that the biggest difference between the two farms might lie in the personalities of the growers themselves. The fact that Roger—such a straight-shooting silent type—grows beans with such sweet, dazzling, rich tones is one of those pleasant surprises that simply defy logic. Coffee sure is unpredictable.