PILLARS OF ANTECEDENCE, El Salvador

Suitable for all brewing methods.

Roasters Notes: Strawberry, Milk Chocolate, Cherry

Los Pirineos sits atop the Tecapa volcano range in Usulután, on the high ground between the towns of Berlín and Santiago de María in eastern El Salvador. The farm takes its name from the Pyrenees that divide France and Spain, and the likeness is earned. Stand on its ridges and the land falls away in every direction, cool and open, the air thin enough to slow the cherry and draw out the clarity these slopes have long been known for. It is country that rewards patience, and few farms in El Salvador have been rewarded more often.

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 stretch of that history the farm was shaped by the late Gilberto Baraona, named El Salvador Coffee Farmer of the Year and placed in the Cup of Excellence more times than almost any grower alive, before his passing in 2020. His work now runs through his son Diego, who tends the trees, refines the processing, and carries the family name forward across the same ground his father walked.

This lot is Pacamara, this El Salvadorian variety is grown for size and for the weight it holds at height, harvesting only the ripened dark red cherries, that measure 20-22º Brix, before being dried whole in the cherry. Rather than washing the fruit away, the cherries are floated to cull the low-density beans and then laid out on raised beds under the plateau sun, carefully monitored and turned for 20 - 25 days until moisture reaches optimal moisture content, 10-12%.