Finca de Garces: Ethiopian Genetics and Three Years of National Recognition from the Slopes of Mt. Kalatungan

Hope is the last one to die.

There is a specific kind of belief that looks like delusion before it looks like anything else. It does not wait for evidence. It does not ask for guarantees. It simply acts as if the future it imagines is already decided, and then works backward from that future into the present, doing what needs to be done today so that something real can exist later.

Most people call this stubbornness. Some call it faith. A few, the ones who turn out to be right, call it a plan.

In mid-2020, while the world was contracting and certainty felt like something nobody could afford, Lito and Gemma Garces planted coffee on the slopes of Mt. Kalatungan in Bukidnon. There was no guaranteed buyer. No competition record. No proof that these particular trees in this particular soil would produce anything worth drinking. There was a sacred mountain, rivers running through the barangay, and a family willing to act as if the outcome was already decided in their favor.

Three years later, the coffee won the Philippine Coffee Quality Competition. Leaf samples traveled to a lab in France. World Coffee Research confirmed what the trees already knew: Ethiopian genetics, wild, ancient, original, thriving in Philippine soil at 1,400 meters above sea level.

A Name Worth Keeping

Finca. The word is Spanish, and its roots go back further than Spain. According to Dictionary.com, the word traces back to Old Spanish fincar, meaning "to remain," derived from the word for driving something into the ground, for fixing, for fastening. It originally meant "amount left over," then evolved to mean "income from a property," and finally "the property itself." At its deepest root, a finca is a place you have committed to staying in. Land you have driven a stake into. A decision to remain.

A finca is a rural property, ranch, or farm in Spain or Spanish America. In Latin American coffee culture, the great farms carry the word like a title: Finca La Esmeralda in Panama, Finca Hartmann in Chiriqui, Finca El Paraiso in Colombia. When Good Cup founder Gio Visitacion suggested the name, he was placing a family from Pangantucan, Bukidnon in the same sentence as the most respected coffee origins in the world.

De Garces. Of the Garces. The farm carries the family name because the farm is the family: Lito and Gemma, their children, processing consultant Novie Valerio and farm manager Ramil, the nursery they built, the drying beds they watch over, the fermentation protocols they developed, all of it rooted in Barangay New Eden, Pangantucan, Bukidnon, at 1,400 meters above sea level on the foothills of Mt. Kalatungan.

The Mountain That Feeds the Farm

Mt. Kalatungan rises 2,880 meters at its peak, the fifth highest mountain in the Philippines, but Finca de Garces sits on its foothills between 1,300 and 1,400 meters, in the zone where the air cools, the forest deepens, and the rivers begin.

The Kalatungan Mountain Range is one of the few areas in Bukidnon covered with old-growth or mossy forests. It is the origin of the headwaters of major river systems in Bukidnon, including the Pulangi and Cagayan Rivers, supplying water for irrigation, power generation, and domestic use across the region.

The Talaandig are an indigenous people of Bukidnon, one of the original communities of the Kalatungan highlands. For the Talaandig, this mountain has always been more than geography. They call it Igmale'ng'en, and its forests are not simply forests. These are forests where the cleanest waters will always flow and never run dry. The Manobo who live on the slopes believe the mountain is where the source of all tribal knowledge lies, where the spirits live and where life originates. Before any outsider can ascend, tribal permission is required. Climbers must take part in a ceremonial ritual performed by Talaandig elders before starting, part of protocols anchored in tribal law.

The Talaandig did not protect these forests because of a government declaration. According to the ADB's documentation of indigenous governance in Mt. Kalatungan, the boundaries of the Igmale'ng'en were designated by their ancestors through spirit-guides, and the traditional rules governing them have been upheld by the community across generations, not through enforcement, but because the forests represent, in their own words, everything that is pure and strong, and their continued existence ensures the community's continued existence and survival. Before anyone could measure a watershed or map a microbiome, they already knew that the health of the mountain determined the health of everything below it. The biodiversity that makes the Pangantucan microclimate unusual, the forest canopy that regulates temperature and humidity, the watersheds that keep the rivers running through harvest season, all of it is there because a community protected it across centuries, for reasons that turned out to be correct.

Belief as stewardship, and the longest kind of foresight. The land has a history, and the coffee comes from inside it.

What the Soil Is

The soil of Mt. Kalatungan is of volcanic origin, derived from volcanic parent materials that have weathered over centuries. Dark, mineral-rich, deeply organic. Soil chemistry can sound like a detail on a coffee bag, so here is what it actually means for a plant.

When volcanic rock weathers over centuries, it releases minerals directly into the earth: iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, trace elements that most soils acquire only through expensive fertilization. The resulting soil is naturally porous, meaning it drains well after heavy rain but holds moisture between rain events. Think of the difference between terracotta and glazed ceramic: the terracotta breathes, releases moisture gradually, creates a more stable environment for roots. Soil of volcanic origin does that for a coffee plant. It can go deep without drowning.

The word terroir comes from French, from terre, meaning earth. In wine, it has been used for centuries to describe the way a place, its soil, elevation, rainfall, temperature swings, and surrounding vegetation, expresses itself in what grows there. In plain language, terroir means: the place has a flavor. Not metaphorically. Physically. Two farms on the same mountain growing the same variety can produce cups that taste measurably different, because the specific intersection of soil, microclimate, and microbial community at each location is not identical. The place is not backdrop, it is ingredient.

Research published in Scientific Reports in June 2025, by scientists at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, documented this at a level that should settle the question for anyone still skeptical. The study collected 320 soil and 320 cherry samples from 22 farms in Colombia, and found that soil and cherry bacterial communities differed between sun and shade farms and between farms that did and did not produce specialty-flavored coffee, with shade-plus-flavor farms notably distinct. Flavor presence was predicted by the abundance of multiple bacterial strains in soils and cherries.

All of that life is invisible. All of it is doing work that will not be tasted for months.

The Falcata Trees and What They Do

Above the coffee grow trees known locally as falcata, and in botanical records as Falcataria falcata, previously classified as Paraserianthes falcataria. The genus name comes from the Latin falcata, confirmed by Merriam-Webster to mean curved like a sickle, which describes the shape of the tree's small leaflets. In the Philippines the common name is falcata, confirmed in the World Agroforestry Centre's species profile, which lists "Filipino: falcata" as its local name. It grows faster than almost anything else in the humid tropics. According to the World Agroforestry Centre, on good sites it can reach seven meters in just over a year.

At Finca de Garces, it is not decoration. It is infrastructure doing several things at once, and it is the clearest example in the farm of nature and human decisions working together.

A cherry that develops slowly, under regulated light and at a cooler temperature, accumulates sugars across a longer window. Shade is that regulation. The falcata's canopy slows the cherry down and lets it become more of what it already is. The farm was built around this shade. And that is where action becomes visible: in the decision to use a specific tree, for a specific purpose, in service of a specific cup.

Beyond shade, the natural drop of falcata leaves and small branches contributes nitrogen, organic matter, and minerals to the upper layers of soil. The falcata is a legume, the same botanical family as beans and lentils, and like its relatives it fixes atmospheric nitrogen through a symbiotic relationship with bacteria in its roots, pulling nitrogen from the air and depositing it into the earth. The root system breaks up compacted earth and creates channels for drainage and aeration. Every leaf that falls is fertilizer. Every branch that drops is organic matter returning to the cycle.

The falcata feeds the soil on its own terms, doing what it has always done. What Novie Valerio and the farm team do is read that soil, test it, respond to what it needs, and make sure the coffee trees growing beneath it receive what the falcata alone cannot provide. The tree creates the conditions. The people tend them. Together, they produce something neither could alone.

The falcata also absorbs the wind that comes off the exposed slopes of Kalatungan, protecting the coffee trees from physical stress and slowing soil moisture loss. According to Novie Valerio, after harvest the trees at Finca de Garces barely lose their leaves, recovery is fast, and production is nearly continuous. This system keeps the farm in balance rather than depletion, but only because the decisions made around it are consistent.

According to a 2024 peer-reviewed paper in Pacific Science by researchers from the USDA Forest Service and Trinity Western University, the falcata is native to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands. It is not originally from the Philippines. It arrived, was planted for timber and agroforestry purposes, and found a new use. It is, in its own way, another arrival that found a purpose in a new place. Which, if you have been paying attention, is a story this province knows well.

What the Garces Family Added

The first decision that mattered was to plant at all.

In mid-2020, during a global lockdown, with no buyer waiting and no competition record to point to, Lito and Gemma Garces chose to begin. That choice, to commit to land, to invest in something with no guaranteed return, to act as if the future they imagined was already real, is the decision that made everything else possible. The nursery, the processing protocols, the competition entries, the DNA test: all of it follows from that first act of commitment.

The Garces family built a nursery first. That is a different kind of commitment entirely. It means raising each plant in a controlled environment before it faces the full force of field conditions, regulated temperature, humidity, and light, giving it time to develop stronger roots, better disease resistance, and higher survival rates at elevation before it is asked to produce anything. It also means the farm can experiment: different varieties trialed before large-scale investment, weak seedlings identified and removed before they spread problems to the rest.

Building a nursery when your farm does not yet exist, when your trees have not yet produced a single cherry, when you have no proof that any of this will work. That is hope made structural. It is the physical form of the conviction that what you are doing today will matter later, even when you cannot see it yet.

Belief combined with action is not passive. It does not sit and wait for the future to arrive. It plants trees that will take years to bear fruit. It chooses a tree like the falcata not because of what it looks like today but because of what it will do to the soil in three years. It builds a nursery not for this harvest but for the one that has not happened yet. It measures brix levels at harvest because the numbers tell you something the eye cannot, and you trust that precision changes outcomes even when the difference is invisible.

Novie Valerio carries that conviction from the nursery to the processing station. She measures brix levels in each cherry before deciding on fermentation times. Brix, in plain terms, is the measure of dissolved sugar in a liquid, the same scale used to measure the sweetness of fruit juices. A ripe coffee cherry typically reads between 18 and 22 degrees Brix, and that number tells Novie whether the cherry has built up what it needs, whether this particular harvest is ready, or whether it needs more time on the branch. She monitors pH as fermentation proceeds. She tracks temperature. She makes decisions the soil cannot make for itself.

According to Good Cup Coffee's farm documentation on Finca de Garces, when asked what makes the farm different on a technical level, Novie's answer is three things: the environment, the fertilization management, and the pest control. It sounds modest. It is not. Those three things, sustained consistently across every harvest, are what turn a farm with good genetics and good soil into a farm that wins national competitions. They are also three things that only happen because someone decided they mattered before there was any evidence that they did.

Three Processes, One Place

Take a cherry from the same tree. Same genetics, same mountain air, same watershed running from the same sacred forest. Process it three different ways. Three completely different coffees.

This is what Finca de Garces produces, and understanding why they taste different requires understanding something true about belief: the same conditions, met with different choices, produce something different every time. You cannot guarantee the result. You make the choice anyway.

Natural. The whole cherry dries intact on raised beds for weeks, fruit and seed together, with no mechanical intervention between harvest and drying except careful sorting. Natural coffees undergo spontaneous fermentation as microbes native to the environment feed on the drying fruit, and the sugars and aromatic compounds migrate gradually into the bean. The result is bold, fruit-forward, full-bodied. At Finca de Garces: dark chocolate, green apple, durian, mangosteen. The full weight of the place, amplified by weeks of slow contact between seed and cherry.

Honey. The skin is removed, but the mucilage, that sticky sugary layer that coats the seed, stays on during drying. As Barista Magazine's documentation of the honey process explains, this mucilage layer stays in contact with the bean throughout fermentation, which typically lasts one to three days, before drying on the exterior of the bean. The result sits between the Natural's intensity and the clarity of a fully washed coffee. At Finca de Garces: honey, orange, chamomile, grapes. Clean, balanced, approachable enough to be someone's introduction to specialty coffee.

Full Moon Natural. Whole cherries are dried slowly and carefully to allow gentle fermentation and enhanced sugar development. The result is kiwi, mandarin orange, orange blossom, honey. Vibrant but precise, expressive without being overpowering, with a silky mouthfeel and a clean, lingering finish. A cup that feels like it has a center.

Same origin, three expressions. The soil, the mountain, the genetics. What changes everything is what happens after the harvest, in the decisions made about how to treat the fruit once it leaves the tree.

What the DNA Test Confirmed

In 2023, Finca de Garces entered the Philippine Coffee Quality Competition. Their Natural Sweet Coffee scored 86 points, winning Best Arabica and Best Natural Processed Arabica. The farm had been producing harvestable coffee for less than two years.

The win brought the question everyone had been carrying to a head. Leaf samples traveled to a lab in France. World Coffee Research confirmed what the trees already knew: Ethiopian genetics, wild, ancient, original, thriving in Philippine soil at 1,400 meters above sea level.

As the Philippine Information Agency reported, the DNA test identified the farm's mother plant as carrying the genetics of an Ethiopian landrace variety, one known for resilience, flavor complexity, and climate adaptability. Arabica coffee originated in the forests of Ethiopia, where the species grew wild before it was cultivated anywhere else, before it was traded to Yemen, then Java, then across the world. Those genetics are now growing in Philippine volcanic soil at 1,400 meters above sea level, tended by a family who started farming during a lockdown.

How this particular variety reached Bukidnon remains unknown. It found soil that suited it, adapted to the place, kept what it came with, and became something that could not have come from anywhere else.

The DNA result did not just validate a variety. It validated the belief. Every farmer who grew Sweet Coffee for generations without knowing its name. The Garces family, planting during a pandemic with no proof the land would reward them. As the Philippine Information Agency documented, the DOT Regional Director described the finding as a source of pride and a marketing edge that strengthens Bukidnon's rising reputation in the global coffee landscape.

DTI records confirm that Finca de Garces earned national recognition at the 2023 and 2024 Philippine coffee cupping contests. In 2023, Manolito Garces won Best Arabica and Best Natural Processed Arabica with a score of 86. At the 2025 Philippine Coffee Quality Competition, he scored 84.02, earning Top 1 Arabica Estate Farm nationally, winning over 100 official entries. The judges noted caramel, floral notes, orange peel zest, nutty flavor, and a tea-like finish.

The Last Thing to Die

Most people call it stubbornness. Some call it faith. A few, the ones who turn out to be right, call it a plan.

In 2020, a family planted coffee during a pandemic with no buyer, no record, and no proof. Just earth, a sacred mountain, rivers running through the barangay, and the conviction that what they were doing would matter, before they had any reason to believe it would.

That conviction did not look like strategy from the outside. It rarely does. But it moved. It built a nursery before the first harvest. It measured brix levels before the first competition. It sealed fermentation tubs at precise temperatures and waited, and kept waiting, because the people doing the waiting believed the care would eventually show up in the cup.

It did.

Three coffees from one origin. A DNA result that confirmed what the cup had been saying for generations. Three consecutive years of national recognition. Researchers from World Coffee Research collecting samples on a mountain that the Talaandig have protected since before anyone thought to write any of this down.

None of that was visible in 2020. None of it was guaranteed. The only thing that existed then was the belief, and the decision to act on it anyway.

That is what this farm is. Not just a place that produces extraordinary coffee. A proof that the gap between planting and result can be crossed, as long as the belief that bridges it does not die first.

Hope is the last one to die. Which means as long as it is still alive, so is everything it was reaching for.

Three coffees from one farm. One origin. Three different expressions of the same place.

Natural: dark chocolate, green apple, durian, mangosteen. Honey: honey, orange, chamomile, grapes. Sweet Coffee Full Moon Natural: kiwi, orange blossom, mandarin, honey.

Origin: Barangay New Eden, Pangantucan, Bukidnon, Philippines.
Altitude: 1,300 to 1,400 MASL.
Producer: Lito and Gemma Garces.
Processing consultant: Novie Valerio.