NOTES: SOFT BERRY NOTES OF BLUEBERRIES, BLACKBERRIES AND STRAWBERRIES WITH A BUTTERY CHOCOLATE AND WINEY FINISH.

Cofradía de Chocolón was founded in 1942 when the Mexican government approved settlers from the nearby town of Tacote to form an Ejido*. The original townspeople earned a living making charcoal and raising cattle. Coffee production came to the town in the mid 1960’s later followed by the arrival of sugarcane in the 1980’s. Cofradía is home to the CALDIO society with whom CAFESUMEX and San Cristobal Importers have been working intensively for the past nine years. Over that time this relationship has helped to improve quality and offer higher and more stable coffee prices. We have seen a slow but steady increase in the size of the CALDIO society over the years. While some minority of the residents of Cofradía still participate in the “traditional” coffee economy, in which they sell their cherries at low prices to regional buyers, many have long reaped the rewards of implementing strict coffee quality controls and participating in the Grupo Terruño Nayarita cooperative structure.

*An Ejido is a community comprised of communal lands designated for agricultural production. Each Ejidatario (joint land owner/farmer) has individual rights to a parcel of land or parcela, these rights can continue indefinitely and be passed on to their children, as long as the land is under consistent cultivation. With its ideology dating back to the calpulli system of the Aztecs, the Ejido system was established by the Mexican government in 1934. The establishment of an Ejido would begin with landless farmers who typically leased lands from wealthy landlords petitioning the government. The government would then consult with the landlord, and redistribute the land if the Ejido was approved. The Ejido would then be established, designating the original petitioners as Ejidatarios with individual rights to the land. Each Ejido is registered with Mexico’s National Agrarian Registry (Registro Agrario Nacional). The Ejido system was eliminated in 1991, citing low productivity of communally owned land. While existing Ejidos were not disbanded and remain to this day, it is largely viewed that their elimination was a direct result of the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) of 1994.