El Salvador Cerro Negro

PROCESS: Washed
VARIETYPacas
ELEVATION: 1,850 meters
ROAST: Medium
BODY: Balanced
NOTES: Sweet and tart with almond and herbal coffee cherry flavors.

Known as “the land of volcanoes,” El Salvador is the smallest Central American country (roughly the same size as New Jersey), but its reputation among specialty-coffee-growing regions has grown larger-than-life, especially since the early 2000s. While coffee was planted and cultivated here mostly for domestic consumption starting in the mid-1700s, it became a stable and significant crop over the next 100 years, notably increasing in national importance during the late 1800s, when the country’s indigo exports were threatened by the development and widespread marketability of synthetic dyes.

Finca Cerro Negro is a 2-hectare farm with about 6,000 coffee trees, owned and operated by Luis Alonzo Hernandez. He grows a mix of varieties, including Pacas, Bourbon, and small about of the leaf-rust resistant hybrid Catimor 90. The coffees are Washed process, picked and depulped before a dry fermentation of between 8–16 hours, after which the coffee is washed and dried on patios for 6–8 days.When he was younger, Luis Alonso hated working on his grandmother's coffee farm, and he never thought he'd work with coffee himself: Now, after 10 years as a grower, he feels like he has grown into coffee, and he feels like it has meaning because coffee touches everyone in the world. He hopes to expand his farm area, and to plant more Pacamara and some Gesha trees as well.