More Than a Family Business — A Family Legacy
For many people, coffee is a morning ritual. For our family, coffee has always been a way of life.
Long before Dorado Select Brands was founded, generations of the Cifuentes family cultivated coffee in the mountains surrounding Bella Vista, Chiapas, Mexico. Coffee wasn’t simply something they produced—it was the heartbeat of their community, their livelihood, and a tradition passed from one generation to the next.
Ali grew up surrounded by conversations about harvests, processing methods, quality, and the challenges facing coffee-growing families. She learned early that exceptional coffee begins long before roasting. It begins with healthy trees, fertile soil, careful harvesting, meticulous processing, and, above all, respect for the people who dedicate their lives to growing it.
Bella Vista, Chiapas
Nestled high in the Sierra Madre mountains near the Guatemalan border, Bella Vista is one of Mexico’s historic coffee-growing regions.
Its volcanic soils, cool mountain climate, abundant rainfall, and elevations reaching over 1,500 meters create ideal conditions for producing remarkable Arabica coffee. Families here have cultivated coffee for generations, often on small farms handed down through their families.
These mountains shaped not only the coffee—but the values that continue to guide Dorado Select today.
A Vision That Changed a Community
Ali’s mother, Rosalba Cifuentes Tovía, believed the coffee from Bella Vista deserved international recognition.
In 2017, she founded Mayan Harvest Coffee with a simple but ambitious mission: help small coffee producers earn better prices by focusing on quality, complete traceability, and direct relationships with specialty coffee roasters around the world.
Rather than treating coffee as a commodity, Rosalba worked alongside her own family members, neighbors, and local producers to improve harvesting, processing, and quality standards. Today, Mayan Harvest represents dozens of small producers—including a growing number of women farmers—while helping showcase the extraordinary potential of Mexican specialty coffee on the world stage.
Growing Up at Origin
Few people have the opportunity to experience coffee from the inside.
Ali spent her childhood watching every stage of the journey—from flowering coffee trees and hand-picking ripe cherries to washing, drying, milling, exporting, and introducing Mexican coffees to specialty roasters throughout North America.
She saw firsthand that every exceptional cup represents months of dedication, careful decisions, and countless hours of hard work by farming families.
Those experiences created an appreciation that cannot be learned in a classroom.
They shaped the philosophy that now guides Dorado Select Brands.
Coffee Is About People
One lesson has remained constant throughout generations of the Cifuentes family:
Great coffee begins with great people.
Behind every remarkable micro lot is a producer who has spent an entire year nurturing their crop. Every harvest represents hope, hard work, risk, and an unwavering commitment to excellence.
The relationships built through Mayan Harvest demonstrated that when producers receive fair recognition for exceptional quality, entire communities benefit through improved livelihoods, reinvestment in their farms, and a stronger future for the next generation of coffee growers.
Carrying the Legacy Forward
Dorado Select Brands is the natural continuation of that journey.
While our family roots remain firmly planted in the mountains of Chiapas, our vision now reaches across the world’s great coffee-producing regions.
Today we carefully curate exceptional micro lots from respected producers around the globe—coffees chosen not only for extraordinary flavor, but for the stories, craftsmanship, and dedication behind every harvest.
Although the origins may change, our values never do.
Integrity.
Respect for producers.
Complete traceability.
An uncompromising pursuit of excellence.
Because for us, coffee has never been just a beverage.
It has always been family.