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.
Manuel Guevara's 5-hectare farm is planted with 3 hectares of coffee, mostly Pacamara and Pacas variety. He has about 9,000 plants, though the climate has affected his production quite a bit, making yields unsteady: His annual harvests have varied from 13–35 quintales in recent years, in part due to coffee-leaf rust, but also the lack of rains which will produce underdeveloped cherries.
The coffees on Finca Maria Luisa are picked and depulped, then fermented dry for 10 hours before being washed and dried on raised beds for about 15 days, on average. He and his brother Jaime have been producing coffee for about a decade, and Don Manuel says that it is a joy to produce coffee, especially specialty coffee, which is new to him. He hopes to grow the size of his farm and plant more Pacamara for coming years.
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.
