Origins
La Batalla: a washed coffee from Xico, Veracruz
Every bar needs a coffee that doesn't miss. Not the exotic lot that sells out in three weeks, nor the process experiment that divides the room: the coffee that shows up every morning, as good on a Monday as on a Sunday. At Gramo, that coffee is called La Batalla, and it comes from Xico, Veracruz.
Xico, where coffee grows in the mist
Xico is a town in the central highlands of Veracruz, in one of Mexico's oldest coffee regions. Coffee there is neither novelty nor trend: it is landscape. Farms climb the hillsides through fog and thick vegetation, and the climate — generous rain, moderate heat, cool nights — does slowly what elsewhere has to be forced: it ripens the cherry at its own pace.
La Batalla comes down from that sierra. We like our everyday coffee being from Veracruz for a simple reason: if we're going to serve a cup hundreds of times a week, it should say something about the country we serve it in.
What "washed" means
La Batalla is a washed-process coffee. After harvest, the cherry is depulped and the bean ferments in water until the mucilage lets go; then it is washed and dried. It is the most transparent process there is: it adds no fermentation flavours, borrows no sweetness — it lets the bean say exactly what it is.
That's why washed coffees are an origin's best introduction. When a washed lot is good, it's because the coffee itself — the land, the altitude, the producer's care — is good. There is nowhere to hide.
The cup: almond, caramel, butter
La Batalla's profile comes down to three notes that explain themselves: almond, caramel and butter. It's a sweet cup without being cloying, round in body, with a clean finish that asks for a second. Nothing shouts; everything accompanies.
The roast is medium, handled by Gramo Coffee Roasters, our own label in Mexico City. It's a roast built for real life: it works in the household V60, the inherited French press and the espresso machine, without demanding a precision scale or prior coursework.
The everyday coffee doesn't have to be the least interesting one. It just has to be the most honest.
Team Gramo
In a 250 gram bag, or by the kilo
La Batalla lives in two formats: the 250 gram bag, for those getting to know it, and the kilo, for households where the coffee runs out before the week does. It is, deliberately, the most accessible coffee in our catalogue — because the starting point of a coffee culture cannot be a luxury.
If you haven't tried it yet, start there: it's the doorway to everything else that passes through our roastery.
