San Francisco. Cafe de El Salvador

Highlights

“Finca San Francisco sits in the Apaneca-Ilamatepec range, one of El Salvador's most important coffee regions, and belongs to a family that has grown coffee for more than a century, combining knowledge passed down through generations with new production and processing techniques. Andrés Salaverría is the fifth generation of that coffee family: he grew up accompanying his father to the mill, completed the Ernesto Illy Coffee Science and Economics programme in 2011, and returned to El Salvador to join the family business, handling the commercial, industrial and administrative side while his father José Antonio Salaverría leads agricultural management. The family farms in Atiquizaya, Concepción de Ataco, Juayúa and Apaneca, and San Francisco — near La Majada, on volcanic soils with moderate temperatures and abundant vegetation — covers 207 hectares of shade-grown coffee that ripens gradually. The property also keeps a forest reserve and takes part in community education and health initiatives. This lot is processed in three stages: cherries are sorted by ripeness, the whole fruit ferments anaerobically to build aromatic complexity, and the coffee is then pulped and dried with part of its mucilage still attached, the honey step, using the Sleeping Bag drying technique. In the cup it recalls red cherry, hazelnut cream and violet, with fruit and floral layers over an enveloping sweetness.”