It would seem logical that the smallest Central American coffee-growing country would produce microlots, but historically, much of the coffee was blended and sold to mills, without much lot differentiation and separation. The rise of specialty coffee in El Salvador has inspired many producers to start to identify and isolate individual varieties, and to experiment with sorting and processing, as a way of attracting buyers and getting higher prices, but access to those resources can still be difficult for smaller growers.
For the past few years, Café Imports green buyer Piero Cristiani—who is from El Salvador, and whose mother has a long history in coffee there—has embarked on a project designed to identify, reward, and bring to market the exceptional results of the hard, innovative work that producers are increasingly interested in doing here.
Focusing on the region of Chalatenango, Piero has partnered with a cupper and a local mill to buy small, select microlots from producers—some separated by variety, some by process, and some by both. We are buying the coffee in parchment and doing the ruling and final sorting and bagging ourselves, which allows for more quality control as well as the ability to package some of these very special small lots in custom 35-kilo Pequeños bags, to create more widespread access to these coffees to roasters.
Alejandro Vasquez grows about 2,200 coffee trees on his small farm, Finca Los Vasquez. About half of his plants are Pacas, and the other half is Pacamara. He picks the cherries as they ripen, depulp them immediately, and ferment them dry for about 12 hours before washing the coffee and laying it on raised beds to dry for 8–12 days. His production is between 6–8 quintal per year, and he does most of the work on the 4-year-old farm himself, including using a hand-depulper when the cherries are harvested and sorted. (He can't keep the depulper at his house, however, after he said that his last one was stolen.)
He has been lucky not to struggle much with coffee-leaf rust, and plans to expand his farm area with more land up the side of one hill, which he's already planted with more Pacamara.
We are proud to offer these micro-microlots, and can’t wait for you and your customers to experience the delicious stuff that comes in these small packages.
For more information about coffee production in El Salvador, visit our El Salvador Origin Page.
