Tony Medina Early Harvest Caturra Bourbon

About the Coffee

Tony Medina is a fourth-generation coffee grower who farms at La Colina in Chimaltenango, Guatemala at 1,700 meters. He's been working his farm for twenty years, cultivating half his 64 manzanas in Caturra and half in Bourbon. Only one quarter of his property is planted with coffee. The rest is protected native forest, certified by Guatemala's National Institution of Protection of Forests (INAB), which provides Tony financial support to maintain the ecosystem.

Tony transitioned from selling cherry to processing his own parchment less than ten years ago. That shift to selling specialty coffee at differentiated prices has allowed him to put all five of his daughters through university, opportunities he never had himself. He's planted 5,000 Gesha plants and some Pacamara since 2019, while managing shade with native Chalum trees alongside pine and cedar. He prunes his shade trees only during the full moon, when plant fluids concentrate in roots and lower parts, making the cuts more effective at controlling growth.

For processing, Tony uses traditional tank fermentation for around 36 hours, followed by patio drying over eight days. He uses a demucilager to mechanically wash the fermented coffee, reducing water consumption. He fertilizes with high-efficiency inputs applied less frequently and in smaller volumes, decomposes and composts coffee pulp to use as organic fertilizer, weeds manually, and sprays just twice yearly for leaf rust using the least toxic product available. The farm's water comes from protected natural springs on the property, and Tony has given the upper portion of his land to members of the local indigenous community who work on the farm.

About Subtext

Subtext roasts in Toronto's industrial east end with a straightforward philosophy: quality in coffee is a direct connection to agriculture. They don't blend coffees, rename them, or roast them dark because they believe those practices have historically kept producers and their treatment invisible while shrouding coffee quality in mystique meant to serve only the consuming world. Their approach makes visible what's already there: biodiversity and people tending to land, craft, and community.

They roast to maximize flavor complexity and balance while bringing out as much origin character as possible. Their profiles avoid any roast flavor while ensuring enough development to prevent imbalanced cups. They calibrate roasts to the second and to the degree, making minute changes based on blind evaluation. For production consistency, they use a ColorTrack to measure degree and uniformity with hundreds of color readings per batch, plus frequent moisture and density analysis of green coffee, sensitive thermocouple readings throughout roasts, and solubility testing of brewed profiles.

"Subtext was borne out of Boxcar Social (one of my favourite places to meet up with friends here in Toronto), during the pandemic. Since then, they've built out one of the more interesting and comprehensive coffee lineups in the country. Near and dear to me, they release an annual transparency report; each report is a thoughtful and honest analysis of the effort they put in to reducing the footprint of their coffee."

- Dean, Director of Coffee