Yogondoy

We visited Oaxaca in late April and cupped through over 50 lots, choosing just a handful of standout coffees to include on this summer’s menu. This offering from Yogondoy arrived to Houston just a few weeks later and marks our first release from the 2026 Mexico harvest. It’s our fourth time to work with this coffee and this year we find that it presents a decidedly dessert-like profile. Expect flavors of apple, caramelized sugar and chocolate. 

San Vicente Yogondoy is a lush, densely forested community in the Sierra Sur region of Oaxaca. Unlike many other coffee producing areas, Yogondoy’s producers typically live in the central town, with their farms only reachable by 2-3 hours on foot or mule. During harvest, they have to move their coffee over the course of several trips back to the city for milling. 

Indigenous traditions are alive and well here. In the Zapotec language, Yogondoy means ‘river of bees’ and many farmers keep beehives for honey and pollination alongside their coffee. Another tradition still very present in the area is the practice of ‘Tequio,’ a method of communal workshare that comes into play during harvest and in off-season maintenance. 

Farmers here cultivate almost exclusively the Pluma variety, a local mutation of Typica with outstanding cup quality that was identified here over 80 years ago. Coffee farms in Yogondoy have a high level of plant diversity, as producers utilize native trees to shade their coffee, as well as for food, medicine, construction materials and water collection.