This farm is cooperatively managed by Mario Moreno and his brothers, Danny and Mabel. Mario Moreno is a a third generation coffee grower, son of Daniel Moreno, and a member of the large Moreno family of producers. He purchased the initial part of his farm in 2008, and inherited the remainder in 2009. Mario’s father, Daniel Moreno, started coffee farming in 1963 with the purchase of La Sierra.

Don Daniel passed away in April, 2018, and his legacy is a coffee farming dynasty in Santa Barbara. His sons and their children consistently produce complex and unique coffees. Together, three generations of Morenos have inspired many of their neighbors and beyond to produce specialty coffee. It takes a unique kind of person to come from a humble background — as the Morenos have — and make coffee cultivation a sustainable business for your family. It is not typically smallholder producers with family histories of small-scale agriculture that are the most successful coffee farmers and this is because it is incredibly challenging to first, consistently cultivate and produce the highest quality coffee and have access to a loyal customer base, and then on top of this, have the education and knowledge to speak quality at the same level as the buyer. The Morenos are in this special category of coffee producer and as with any other success story, their sustained top position requires a mixture of ambition, long-term planning, understanding what their market is looking for, and constant reevaluation and tweaking of agronomic, harvesting and processing techniques.