As a tour guide, I struggle to sign up for a tour when I travel, believing I can put it together on my own for a fraction of the price. I should know better because, as a tour guide, I know the unique perspective a local can offer. Choosing the Taxco coffee plantation tour on AirBnB experiences was easy because there was no way I could take us on a tour of a private coffee plantation and certainly no way I could have provided the first hand perspective that the owner, Ernestina, gave us on our tour.
The tour began like an Italian car chase. Because we didn’t have a vehicle, our host arranged for one of the VW bug taxis (called vochos) to bring us from the town of Taxco to the plantation. We raced along the highway that hugged the undulating contours of the mountainside, passing several slower vehicles on narrow winding curves until we arrived at the coffee plantation 20 minutes later. Ernestina was waiting for us with breakfast and coffee, which we enjoyed overlooking the valley below.
After breakfast, she handed us walking sticks and guided us down the steep hill of the plantation, sharing with us the history of how it came to be. Ernestina was born in Taxco but moved to Mexico City as a teenager. While in school, she began work in a coffee shop and later attended coffee making school. When she returned to Taxco as an adult, she and her family started a coffee company they call Taxkafe.
They bought the hillside property and began planting coffee shrubs they imported from a nursery. It was an impressive feat. In just eight years, they planted hundreds of coffee shrubs. She explained that the plants required shade so they planted them beneath the existing canopy of trees, and they were planted in pairs so that when they became weighted down with cherries, they could support each other in the wind.
The fruit that contains the bean is called a cherry, and each cherry contains two beans. She let us taste them, and they were sweet like a cherry or grape. I’m sure an experienced harvester could also assess the quality of the coffee from that taste, but we just enjoyed the sugar shot. Ernestina’s family grows at least three different varieties that produce different quality beans. Two are premium beans and are used for coffee. The third variety is used in beauty products like soap and lotions.
She instructed us on the precise way to pick the cherry that contained the seeds. You have to pinch it off, leaving behind the stem to grow the next year’s harvest. We were fortunate to tour the plantation during the harvest season so we got to try our hand at picking cherries.
We were to select only the red ones as the green were not yet ripe. As you pick the ripe ones from the cluster, you continue along the hillside from shrub to shrub collecting the cherries in a basket, which you try not to drop, Joan, or you end up having to pick them a second time from the ground.
After 10 minutes, our knees and fingers were tired from crouching down and picking. We couldn’t believe when Ernestina told us that she normally worked from sunrise to sundown seven days a week picking the cherries. Even more unbelievable was that picking was her favorite part of the business, which included the tours, the roasting, and making the products.
We climbed back up the steep hill with our meager harvest, a collection of cherries that barely covered the bottom of the basket, and it was clear that she would never hire us. Still, we were comforted by the sights and sounds of the canopy. We felt as if our energy was renewed by simply walking through the plantation. Maybe it was the caffeine radiating off the coffee plants or the cup of coffee we enjoyed upon our return.
Before leaving the plantation we stopped by the gift shop to peruse the number of products that were made from the beans of this plantation. There were coffee scented lotions, candles and soaps; coffee flavored marshmallows; chocolate covered coffee beans and of course bags of coffee. Ernestina gifted us a bag of her premium ground coffee just for visiting. We left, not just with a handful of products that might last us a few weeks, but an experience to last us a lifetime.
We returned to Casa Spratling with only a week left in our visit. While we would be sad to leave, we were looking forward to getting to a bigger town with even more offerings!