Joseph Creek Coffee is owned and operated by Scott and Michelle McDonald in Enterprise. They have had a love of coffee since before they were married—they shared their love of coffee with early morning coffee dates while engaged, and have had a morning cup together ever since. Scott began roasting coffee at home in 2012 and has developed his craft year by year. They were able to renovate a space in 2019 in Enterprise and setup a roastery with the help of a number of coffee lovers in the community. Their goal is to see Joseph Creek Coffee grow into a business that employs local talent while supplying the region with excellent coffee.
Joseph Creek Coffee uses single-origin beans from Central America, most recently from a small farm in El Salvador. Their importer specializes in direct trade with small farms/cooperatives, which are sustainably managed but are not strictly organic.
About JCC's current beans:
The farm Finca Miravalle is owned by Luis Duarte, and is located in Apaneca, Ahuachapan, not too far from the Santa Ana volcano. Miravalle is about 1500 meters above sea level, and is only planted in Pacamara. It's part of a much larger group of coffee plots, a few of them demarcated by cultivar separations, and the larger plots a mix of cultivars. Duarte has kept his farm planted in Bourbon and Pacamara for the most part, despite the susceptibility to leaf rust. Many farmers are replanting with disease resistant varietals, but Luis Duarte has chosen to continue with these cultivars because of the commonly held belief that they taste superior to most disease resistent hybrids available and manages to prevent leaf rust and fungal outbreaks with good farm practices (proper space between plants, regular pruning, cleaning beneath the trees, directive spraying, etc). Miravalle is only a few hectares in size, and is perched on the verdant slopes of the Apaneca-Ilamatepec mountain region. This lot is the result of a new coffee project in the region by one of the local mills, their goal being to identify the top qualities from farmers they already buy coffee from. These coffees are then kept separate throughout the milling process, sold as an individual microlots as opposed to being lost to large blends.