El Salvador – Archived

Taste: One of the “gentle classics”,  El Salvador offers a light, sweet, and buoyant cup that works well as an unobtrusive base to a blend.  When dark roasted for espresso, you’ll note a satisfying sweetness and cloying chocolate note. When allowed to stand alone, this coffee is popular among black coffee drinkers due to its lighter acidity and natural sweetness.

Roast: El Salvador shines best as a dark (French) roast and is a popular addition to espresso blends.

About: El Salvador has been traditionally known for bigger estates in Santa Ana. High up on the north face of Volcan de Santa Ana, Buenos Aires is one of the best coffee areas of El Salvador. It’s a tight-knit community where farmers help to harvest each other’s cherries. The Rio Zarco mill receives beans from more than 80 Buenos Aires farmers, from which they sort for quality from farms starting at 1450 meters up to 1700 meters. Blended together, these quality coffees become our Buenos Aires community lots.

When Isidro Batlle bought this farm in the 1920’s, he was so inspired by how high-altitude it is that he named it Las Nubes, for “the clouds.” Celebrating almost 100 years of coffee production, Las Nubes is still one of the standard-bearers for quality in the region, placing special emphasis on improvement in processing and experimentation with varieties and other innovations.

Farm manager Eduardo Moran Larin not only oversees the mostly Bourbon variety trees here, but also a 15-manzana section that is dedicated to a development project growing Typica, Kenya, and Castillo varieties in order to diversify with more coffee-leaf-rust-resistant plants. A century of attentive farming and passion for coffee has allowed the farm to develop a singularly impressive soil structure, and good husbandry also contributes to the success of the land: Altitude plus proper fertilization plus careful consideration for the density of the plants and the management of the whole ecosystem are part of what make Las Nubes a special environment that produces special coffees.

Las Nubes produces Washed, Honey, and Natural coffees, and the focus is on quality from harvesting through processing, all the way to the cup. This is a Washed process of the Bourbon variety that comprises the majority of the coffee grown here.

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