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.
With just 1.5 manzanas and about 4,500 coffee trees (mostly Pacas and Pacamara), Victor Manuel Reyes only produces about 12–17 quintales of coffee per year, but he says that through coffee he is able to offer his family a more sustainable livelihood. He has had some trouble with coffee-leaf rust as well as most of the producers here, and it has lowered his yields, but he looks forward to selling his entire harvest and in having more coffee next year.
Victor Manuel offers Washed coffees, which are picked and depulped on the same day, fermented dry for 10–12 hours, then washed before being spread on raised beds to dry for 12–17 days.
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.
