Near the banks of Río Jate in La Herradura, Cortijo Chaves has a coffee plantation run by the Mateos family; you’d expect mangoes, avocados and custard apples (they have them too) but coffee cultivation? Mind you they also grow all sorts of odd-sounding things such as fruta del dragón, plataneras rojas, caviar cítrico, mano de buda and bergamota.

Manuel Mateos, admittedly, is thought to be a bit eccentric when it comes to growing things by some but others consider him to be a pioneer, so when he saw that they were cultivating coffee in Agaete in the Canary Islands, he thought, “now that’s an idea.”

The fact is that the Costa Tropical has long been a testing bed for subtropical fruit trees, thanks to its climate. In the late 40s, the coast was still sugar cane but by the early 50s avocados had made an appearance and look at it now!

So Manolo planted 120 coffea shrubs and crossed his fingers. Last year’s crop was a failure but this year’s looks to be better. It’s trial and error, he admits. He said that he made the mistake letting the damp get to the beans, after laying them out to dry on a mesh.

He pointed out that you need a lot of beans to make an expresso, in fact he calculates that one coffee shrub produces 25 expressos, so you can imagine the work involved – and that’s just the cultivation and harvesting part of it – next comes the roasting and milling. For this he has teamed up with José who owns Cafetería Lisboa on the Paseo de Andrés Segovia in La Herradura and who has the toasting or roasting equipment.

The idea is that in the municipality of Almuñécar you will be able to drink coffee “Made in Almuñécar,” so let’s wish them luck!

(News: Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia – Original article Ideal/PGT)