Café De Maria, Las Terrazas, Cuba

Café De Maria, Las Terrazas, Viñales, Cuba
Cuba is not noted for its great coffee, in fact, ask any Cuban on the street and they’ll most likely shrug and respond dryly with “We don’t grow great coffee but we grow the world’s best tobacco and that’s enough.” But this may be underselling the product a little.
The tiny island nation lags behind in industrial terms and its political situation means that exports are hardly booming either, so finding Cuban beans abroad is not too commonplace. Other South American countries have stolen a march and cornered the market and conditions are not always ideal when you sit in the middle of a channel that is battered by storms from the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea and the wide Sargasso Sea.
Venture around 75km West of Havana though, and you’ll hit the Viñales valley, an area of immense beauty thanks to the luscious greenery and prehistoric limestone rock formations that now fall under UNESCO protection. The area was once a prime location for French coffee farmers that fled there after the revolution in Haiti due to the nutrient rich souls and the undulating mountains offering the right amount of shade for coffee production. But subsequent centuries of over farming and poor land management left a swathe of desolation in the surrounding hills. 
After the Cuban revolution, the newly installed government put in place a project to restore the region and now, at its heart is the ecological reserve of Las Terazas, a highly regulated tourist spot centred around a small community. This community consists of only a 1000 people or so, most of whom work in the reserve, but one such member was the elderly Maria who started selling coffee from the window of her flat to neighbours and passing tourists until such time that the business was so profitable, the government offered her a unit on the end of the block of flats to serve as a legitimate business venture.
Sadly Maria is now gone but her legacy lives on in Café Maria that sits on the hillside serving up beverages made entirely from locally grown and sourced coffee, cocoa, and milk. Still a hub of the community, many schoolchildren will stop in for a hot chocolate on their way home whilst adults might decide on a concoction that mixes the other great Cuban product of rum.
I opt for a thick, black coffee that’s strong enough to trot a mouse on but the depreciating comments about home grown coffee seem unfounded since the arabica roast matches up to almost anything else I’ve tasted. Perhaps slightly earthier due to its basic production (things are not roasted in giant vats with timers  here or done to exact temperatures, it is all done by hand and as precisely as possible with limited technology, but this adds an extra layer of artisanal craft to it all) but I am convinced enough to buy a bag of beans to take home with me for my own machine at home. I sit by the railings of the cafe that look out over the lake and down into the valley below. Very few coffee shops in the world will have a better view and if you have coffee, nature and sunshine, I doubt that very many experiences will come close to that either.