The quick Red Fox has jumped over the lazy wall. After years of coffee sourcing work in the area, Oakland-based importer Red Fox Coffee Merchants have announced plans to open a year-round coffee lab in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Red Fox’s lab in Oaxaca is their second at origin, following a previously established lab in Lima, Peru. With a base in Oaxaca, the new lab will also be working with farmers in nearby Veracruz and Chiapas—who, along with Oaxaca, are the “three main producing states in the south of the country,” as per Red Fox.

For Red Fox, the impetus for opening a lab in Mexico is multi-faceted. From the announcement:

Mexico has something extra going on that’s just, rad. The creativity is overflowing and inspiring… Beyond coffee, Mexico has one of the most exciting culinary traditions and innovative scenes going on right now anywhere in the world… Coffee is part of that now more than ever. We want to be a part of that.

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It’s also true that the coffees are really, really good here. There is a lot of work happening in the field to improve quality and revive the incredible bank of genetic material that they still have in Mexico and maybe not anywhere else.

Red Fox co-founder and career specialty coffee sourcing expert Aleco Chigounis tells Sprudge:

We see Mexico in the same light that we saw Peru in the years prior to opening our operation in Lima a few seasons ago; a country full of smallholder farmers willing and able to deliver high quality green to the specialty marketplace, but lacking the access necessary to enter. The fact that the altitudes across the southern end of the country are extreme latitudinally by comparison to most any other producing country, coupled with the older varieties still grown within its producing regions make the potential for quality as great or greater than any of Mexico’s neighbors to the south in Central America.

The Red Fox sourcing lab is scheduled to open later this month, with “a large range of offerings from each come May and June,” including coffees from the Pluma de Oaxaca area. For more information on the new lab or the upcoming offerings, visit Red Fox Coffee Merchants’ official website.

Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.

Top image via Red Fox Coffee Merchants