PILLARS OF ANTECEDENCE, El Salvador

Strawberry, Milk Chocolate, Cherry

Los Pirineos sits atop the Tecapa volcano range in Usulután, on the high ground between Berlín and Santiago de María in eastern El Salvador. The farm takes its name from the Pyrenees, and the likeness is earned. From its ridges the land falls away in every direction, cool and open, the air thin enough to slow the cherry.

The Baraona family have grown coffee on this mountain for more than a hundred and thirty years, working from the largest private seed bank in the country, a living collection of more than eighty varieties. For a long stretch of that history the farm was shaped by the late Gilberto Baraona, a repeated Cup of Excellence placegetter, before his passing in 2020.

His work now runs through his son Diego, a fifth-generation grower who tends the trees, refines the processing, and carries the family name across the same ground his father walked.

This lot is Pacamara, the El Salvadoran variety grown for size and for the weight it holds at height. Only ripe dark red cherry at 20 - 22º Brix is taken. The cherry is floated to cull low density fruit, then laid whole on raised beds under the plateau sun, turned and monitored for 20 - 25 days until moisture settles at 10 - 12%.