New Release | Honduras Omar Rodriguez Jr
This crowd-pleasing coffee boasts rich sweetness through notes of dark fruits and sugars.
Nestled near the summit of a mountain in the Copán region of Honduras lies the vibrant coffee farming community of Capucas, home to the Cooperativa Cafetalera Capucas Limitada (COCAFCAL). This cooperative is the heartbeat of the area, where the rhythm of life and the local economy are intimately intertwined with coffee production.
This past February, our visit to our dedicated partner producers in Capucas filled us with excitement. We found the operations in full swing, producing coffee of exceptional quality. Our microlots are tasting fantastic, and the macrolots we source from Capucas continue to impress! If you’re a fan of our Isabelle or OZO Blends, you’ve been savoring the rich flavors of Capucas coffee for years!
Omar Rodriguez Jr., the dynamic president of COCAFCAL, upholds a proud family legacy. Following in his father’s footsteps, Omar Jr. has taken the helm, overseeing much more than just green coffee management. COCAFCAL members benefit from a range of facilities including mills, a cafeteria, a café, a cupping lab, a coffee tree nursery, a computer lab, a solar drying complex, a conference center, fishing ponds, and orchards brimming with fruits and vegetables.
Omar’s leadership ensures that these resources are well-maintained and that both producers and staff thrive. The cooperative boasts over 375 members who collectively produce an impressive 245 shipping containers of coffee annually—that’s over 10 million pounds!
Beyond his administrative duties, Omar Jr. is a dedicated coffee producer, renowned for his focus on quality. This year, we are delighted to feature his washed microlot, processed at COCAFCAL’s state-of-the-art facilities. This coffee offers a sweet profile of fig and brown sugar, balanced by a rich taste of marzipan, making it an easy-drinking and perfectly balanced cup.
In April of this year, OZO staff were fortunate enough to have Omar visit us in Colorado. We hosted him in our lab for a cupping of our coffee offerings - he really loved our Ethiopia Ardi (releasing 7/5/24) mostly because the flavors found in that cup are wildly uncommon to find in Honduran coffee. After the cupping, we gave him a tour of our roasting facility and cafes in the area. It was a full circle moment to be able to share the finished product with the person responsible for this product to begin with. Hosting Omar was a rare opportunity that was sweetened with an hour-long presentation to our staff about the Cooperative. Mediated by Green Buyer Zoe Gigas, producer Omar Rodriguez and OZO CEO Justin Hartman talked about our long-term relationship and the financial stability that provides both parties, the environmental initiatives Capucas is working on like soil regeneration, shade growth, and diversification, and the significance of storytelling in the coffee world. Moments like this allow people to literally put a person behind the name which is nothing short of inspiring. We are grateful to Omar for spending time with the team, for educating our staff, and for sharing his incredible coffee with the OZO community. It is an honor to showcase year over year.
Omar, Delilah (Omar's Wife), Justin Hartman
Omar & Delilah
Justin Hartman, Zoe Gigas, Omar