Lady Blue: The Coffee Grown by the Woman of Samac
High in the volcanic hills of Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, a few hours northwest of Cobán, lies Samac — a small agricultural community with a history as rich as the coffee it produces. This is where Lady Blue, MOGI's single-origin coffee, begins its journey.
A Land With a Story
The land around Samac wasn't always in the hands of the people who work it today. In the late 1800s, German settlers took over the territory, initially cultivating cardamom — at the time a crop nearly as valuable as gold. Over the decades that followed, the forests were cleared and the local Q'eqchi' Maya families who had always lived on this land worked it as laborers, not owners.
Everything changed after the Second World War. Under pressure from the United States, Guatemala expropriated German-held properties, and in the years that followed, agrarian reform returned the land to the communities who had cultivated it for generations. In 1971, the families of Samac formalized this new chapter by founding their own cooperative — turning colonial-era farmland into a community-owned enterprise built on coffee.
A Cooperative Run By and For Women
Today, the Samac cooperative — together with its sister cooperative in Esquipulas, La Libertad — brings together more than 400 members from roughly 230 Q'eqchi' families, producing around 90 tons of coffee each year. What makes Lady Blue distinct isn't just its origin, but who grows it: this is a women-only project, part of a broader effort to use coffee as a tool for restoring economic independence and self-esteem among women in rural Guatemala.
Women hold leadership roles throughout the organization. In La Libertad, the cooperative's presidency is held by Ileana Martinez, and women make up the majority of the executive board. In Cobán, young women with degrees in Agronomic Sciences work as technical staff in the fields, while others — trained in Humanities or Nursing — run essential community services: the preschool, the elementary school, the cafeteria, the local infirmary. The cooperative also funds scholarships for education and sport, and offers free medical care to families in the surrounding villages.
For many of these women, cooperative work is more than employment. Every worker has a formal contract and a fair wage, calculated against Guatemala's real cost of living — a rarity in a region where informal, unprotected labor is still common. As the primary income earners in their households, these women don't just support their families; they sustain the entire local economy.
From the Land to the Cup
Lady Blue is grown using methods that honor a relationship with the land developed over generations — what the cooperative describes as an unbroken bond between people and Mother Nature. The beans are roasted with a light touch, designed to preserve the coffee's natural character rather than mask it under heavy roast flavors.
The result is a full-bodied, balanced blend: rounded acidity, natural sweetness, and a smooth intensity that holds up whether you're pulling a crema-rich espresso, brewing a stovetop moka, or steeping a French press.
Part of Something Larger
Lady Blue is one strand of a wider initiative, Cafè y Caffè — a cooperation project connecting small Central American coffee producers with Italian roasters, built on direct trade relationships rather than anonymous supply chains. For MOGI, working with Samac isn't a marketing choice, it's a continuation of the company's broader commitment, as a benefit corporation, to sourcing that supports the people behind the product — not just the beans themselves.
Every bag of Lady Blue carries that story forward: from the cardamom fields of the 1800s, through decades of land reform, to a cooperative today led largely by women who turned reclaimed land into a source of independence.
