COME RUIN AND RAPTURE, El Salvador

Mauricio tends five estates across Ataco and Apaneca, among them Cruz Gorda, Finca Himalaya, Villa Galicia and Tablon Divisadero. Each site is chosen and worked in reverence to its terrain and climate, yielding lots shaped by shade, altitude and restraint. Most coffee grows beneath canopy. Drying is deliberate and tiered, exposed to full sun above or slowed beneath shade below. Every harvest is recorded by date. Every space kept immaculate. Water is gathered from rain for washed lots, and the husk is returned to purpose, brewed into cascara from Bourbon and Pacamara. Care is not an afterthought here. It is the method.

Finca Himalaya rests in soft volcanic clay within the Apaneca Mountains. Shade grown coffee thrives beneath cypress and pine, sustaining bees, rabbits, butterflies and birds that share the land. African beds, shielded from wind, draw moisture away slowly and evenly. Coffee has been grown here since 1875. Its name carries weight, long regarded as the first specialty coffee farm in El Salvador.

The extended natural process used for this lot begins in heat and patience. Cherries are stacked deep to raise temperature, turned through the day, cocooned beneath plastic through the night. After several days the ritual shifts. Cherries are spread thin, turned often, clarity coaxed through time. They are then laid to rest in the bodega to await dry milling.