Municipality in La Paz department renowned for coffee, with the first protected origin denomination for coffee.
Marcala is a municipality in La Paz department, Honduras, covering 218 km2. It is renowned for coffee and boasts the first protected origin denomination for coffee. Its name means Land of Prisons in the Lenca language, and it is a center of the Lenca Trail tourism initiative. The regulating council describes the denomination as the first registered in Honduras and in Central America.
Field notes
- i
Marcala's name means Land of Prisons in the Lenca language.
- ii
The Café Marcala denomination covers 202 villages in 19 municipalities across three departments, not just the municipality of Marcala, and 92% of its producers farm under 5 ha.
- iii
Café Marcala requires coffee to score at least 80 points on the SCAA scale, and the regulating council says its farms run from 1,100 to 2,000 m at an average of 18-21 °C.
Sources · 2 Every sentence here was checked against a source we read. Taste notes are what guides describe, not promises about your bag. Last revised 2026-11-10. Some details here are less settled than others.
- Marcala · Wikipedia
- DO Café Marcala: sostenibilidad (presentation for Italy) · Consejo Regulador DO Café Marcala, via oriGIn