CITLATL CAFEN coffee cooperative

Planting

CITLATL CAFEN coffee cooperative is a group of Mexican farmers that got together to face the inequity of the current coffee industry in a very remote and forgotten rural region in the Mountains of Veracruz. IXPALUCA is the name of the very small town in the Sierra de Zongolica coffee region. It is a remote and isolated geography with an indigenous Nahuatl population that still conserves its ancestral cultural identity, with a great lag in socio-economic standards. The region is completely rural, with a peasant life and deep-rooted agricultural traditions around a sustainable food production system.

Ensambles Cafés Mexicanos

ENSAMBLES is a Mexican organization that strives to transform the coffee industry, reviewing the role of every social actor in the coffee value chain, from production to consumption. ENSAMBLES, as coffee producer, works directly with many farmers in México to move forward to a regenerative agriculture that protects the environment and respect the people. ENSAMBLES serves the Equal Profit model as coffee sourcing, producer relations, quality control, beans processing and sorting, logistics and exporting.

Producer

Xalala

Roaster

My name is Michael Würzner and I discovered specialty coffee in 2013, during a trip to the state of Oaxaca in Mexico. There I drank an exceptional coffee in a shop that roasted coffee from local coffee growers on site. At the time, I was a diplomat for the federal government, specializing in sustainability issues, especially food products.  I was passionate about this job, but I wanted to be able to put sustainability into practice.

Since this experience in Mexico, coffee quickly became my passion and I started taking classes and studying everything related to coffee. So much so that after a few years of thinking about it, I decided to leave diplomacy to found my coffee roasting company.

By founding Xalala, my goal was to create a company and products based around the notions of quality, simple joy and ecological and social responsibility. Connecting and sharing my passion from one end of the chain to the other, be it with producers or customers, is a central aspect at Xalala. This is probably also one of the reasons why I decided to settle in the heart of the Valais, in the middle of the vineyards, in a house that also brings together other lovers of the terroir (winegrowers and producers working in organic and/or biodynamic agriculture), because it is a land of passion that fits perfectly with Xalala.

We are constantly in a world of stress, where we forget to live and appreciate nature, the landscapes, the people around us and the wonderful liquid that is coffee. It's time to change this and Xalala puts all its heart into it.