MEXICO TILICHE

Recommended Retail Price: 16/250g

Tasting Notes: Heady black grapes along with stewed red plum, followed by candied orange peel, finishing with baker's chocolate. A coffee that showcases its unique processing.

Region: Sierra Sur, Oaxaca
Altitude: 1450 - 1650 m.a.s.l.
Variety: Bourbon, Typica, Caturra
Processing: Washed, inoculated, 72-hour fermentation

UK Arrival: October 2025

One of two Mexican coffees we’re roasting this year, what sets this one apart is the way it was processed. After de-pulping it was fermented with lactic acid bacteria derived from red wine. Adding bacteria, known as inoculation, is a process borrowed from wine. It can create a consistent flavour profile in coffee that might otherwise be inconsistent, meaning more money for producers and more good coffee for consumers.

Producers

This is a community lot grown by producers in Santa Cruz Ozolotepec, high in the mountains of the Sierra Sur region of Oaxaca. The community has a rich coffee history dating back over 80 years, and the tradition has been passed down from generation to generation. Most farmers own small plots of land, between one and three hectares. Families work together to harvest and process one anothers’ coffee. The more experienced family members play a critical role, sharing their knowledge and experience with the younger generations. In addition to coffee, the community also produces other agricultural products such as fruit trees (orange, lemon, banana), and native shade-providing timber resources. Additionally, some coffee-producing families grow corn and beans for their own consumption.

Processing

Normally Oaxacan farmers process their coffee themselves to the parchment stage. This means they de-pulp the cherries, ferment them in tanks overnight and then spread the coffee out to dry on patios or rooftops. However, after working with the Santa Cruz Ozolotepec community for two years and realising that the quality of the coffee was suffering due to inconsistent processing, Evie Wojtas, the founder of Que Onda, who exported this coffee and sold it to us, decided to buy cherry from the farmers and partner with a wet mill to process it.

“This is my first year working on this particular project, and it came about after spotting a common issue at origin—lots often get rejected because of quality, which always felt wrong.” Evie tells us. “So this year, we tried something different. We bought fresh cherries from a community where quality hadn’t been great in the past, and where producers weren’t too focused on improving their processing. Instead of walking away, we took the cherries to the wet mill and handled the fermentation ourselves.The results have been really exciting!”

Evie had done a course on inoculated fermentation with Lucia Solis, who is an innovator in the coffee industry working to help farmers get more consistent results using yeast and bacteria to control fermentation. Solis has a fascinating podcast and a YouTube channel explaining her methods and runs courses to teach them. Her method stems from her experience in the wine industry. 

All coffee undergoes fermentation during processing, but Solis’s method controls this fermentation by using ozonated water to clean the naturally occurring yeast and bacteria from the cherries and then adding commercial yeast and bacteria used for brewing beer or winemaking to ferment the coffee. She specialises in washed Central American coffees.

To create this lot Evie partnered with Galguera Gómez, a third-generation coffee company (producer, miller and exporter) with over 50 years of experience in the Sierra Sur region and over 20 years working with the producers in Santa Cruz Ozolotepec. Galguera Gómez works to combine cultural preservation with rigorous quality improvement. They purchase coffee consistently, offering pre-harvest financing and post harvest quality premiums. They offer technical and agronomy support to farmers including developing nanotechnology-based organic fertilisers to boost productivity and cup quality and helping to plant endemic trees to protect ecosystems, recognising that coffee sustainability relies on environmental resilience.

Variety

This coffee is believed to be a blend of Typica, Bourbon and Caturra varieties, but Oaxacan farmers often call the variety they grow Criollo, which literally translates to creole. The word indicates that it’s a mix of varieties and what people usually mean is a native variety that has been growing there for years. Coffee plant morphology isn’t always clear, so it’s often impossible to tell from looking at a plant what variety it is. What we do know is that most Oaxacan producers can’t afford to plant new stock, so the coffee trees they grow are usually much older than you’d find in other places. This means that the trees are unlikely to be newer, disease resistant hybrids and are probably a mix of the older varieties that would have been planted a generation ago. 

Name

This lot was named Tiliche by Evie Wojtas, founder of Que Onda. In Oaxaca, Tiliche is a traditional Oaxacan character that people dress as during Carnival and that embodies mischief and joy in the face of hardship. The costume is stitched from scraps and rags, often paired with wide-brimmed hats, wooden or woven masks and sometimes clay jugs. 

Typically we try to name our coffees after the people who grew them. It’s a way of acknowledging the work of farmers and to promote transparency. However, there are several steps in the chain of production and sometimes the flavour of the resulting coffee has more to do with the work put in during processing or even during lot selection and blending than with the raw product itself.

About the Tiliches of Oaxaca, from Que Onda

A Celebration of Joy, Humour and Tradition

In the mountains of Oaxaca, the Tiliches are more than just ragged costumes — they are living expressions of joy, mischief, and cultural memory. These vibrant figures take to the streets during Carnival, dressed in handmade outfits stitched from scraps, often paired with wide-brimmed hats, wooden or woven masks, and sometimes clay jugs. Their playful dances and antics bring laughter and chaos, echoing the spirit of community celebration.

Tiliches represent the working class and their Indigenous roots, with costumes crafted from old and discarded objects. This use of worn materials reflects both resistance and resilience — a form of social critique that turns hardship into festivity. Through humour, music, and dance, the Tiliches embody a creative defiance and deep connection to local identity.

Historians trace their origins to the 19th century, when seasonal laborers hired to harvest cotton and other crops would use festival time to dress in rags and play tricks on one another. These early performers became known as marmanos — a playful shortening of mi hermano (my brother) — and are still sometimes referred to as viejos (old men).

Over time, the costume evolved into the patchwork character we see today: hunched backs to suggest age and endurance, masks and oversized hats to disguise identities, and a mischievous energy that fills the streets. In every stomp and swirl, the Tiliches remind us that tradition is not only to be honored, it’s to be danced with.