The Guerrero region of western Mexico is famous for a number of things: the beaches of Acapulco; the birthplace of the Mexican Revolution; drug cartel activity; the place where actor Morgan Freeman ends up in Shawshank Redemption. But for coffee lovers, its notoriety is growing due to washed and “natural gold”--coffee grown in the high Sierra Occidental Range.
Coffee cultivation came to this area barely three generations ago. In fact, some of those intrepid farmers who brought coffee over the mountains to the sleepy village of Zihuatanejo still tend their original farms. Guerrero coffee growers care about the quality of their product, and though infrastructure and exporting has limited them in the past, they are increasingly working with specialty coffee roasters and importers to bring their excellent coffees to the forefront.