Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Coffee
419
Filadelfia Coffee Estate
Wake Up & Smell the Coffee
Antigua, Guatemala
Here's a novel twist: You don't just tour
this coffee plantation, you actually stay
there overnight, waking in the morning to
the intoxicating smell of coffee roasting in
the mill nearby.
Just outside the old colonial city of Anti-
gua, this small luxury country hideaway is
on a 360-hectare (900-acre)working plan-
tation owned for four generations by the
family of Don Roberto Dalton, with smoky
blue views of the Agua Volcano in the near
distance. (Remember, volcanic soils equal
premium coffee beans.) Built in a rustic
fieldstone style with traditional red-tiled
roofs, this isn't just a converted bunk-
house but a resort with five-star amenities:
a restaurant, an outdoor pool and tennis
courts, horseback riding, arrangements
with a nearby golf course and spa, even
Pratesi linen sheets and Wi-Fi in all the
rooms. So you don't forget where you are,
green coffee bushes cover the hillsides,
and coffee beans dry in the sun on large
patios just past the hotel buildings, raked
into geometric designs that have a Zen
garden quality to them.
If you don't stay at the resort, you can
still take the 2-hour tour of the plantation
and its
beneficio,
tracing the various
stages of the coffee chain from tender
green seedlings to roasted bean. Filadelf-
ia's award-winning coffee is made from
Arabica beans, transplanted from the
nursery to upland slopes at an elevation of
1,950m (6,500 ft.; high altitudes equal
premium coffee beans too), which tour
participants reach via mule or jeep. The
tour ends with a cupping session in the
plantation's “coffee laboratory,” where
guests learn how to distinguish among dif-
ferent types of coffee.
Don Roberto's brainstorm—adding a
hotel to his ancestral estate—enabled him
to remain in the coffee business even as
world coffee prices have plummeted. His
longtime workers remain employed too,
so it's a win-win-win situation.
(
Guatemala City (47km/29 miles).
L
$$$
Filadelfia Coffee Resort &
Spa,
San Felipe de Jesus, Antigua (
&
502/
7728-0800;
www.filadelfiaresort.com).
Coffee
420
The Kona Coast
The Land of Kona Gold
Big Island, Hawaii
Driving along the Big Island's southwest
coast, on a breathtakingly beautiful 20-mile
(32km) stretch of the Mamalahoa Highway,
you can't help but notice the lush green
plantations carpeting the steep slopes on
either side. Those aren't just any orchards;
they grow America's only domestically
grown coffee—Kona, a strain of Arabica
