Take a video tour of Finca San Luis during the harvest peak with the Duarte family
Earlier this month I had the pleasure of visiting Finca
Spanish 101: Finca is the Spanish word for farm. Sometimes the term Hacienda is used to imply an Estate, which would mean the farm has its own wet-mill.... San Luis in Concepción de Ataco, El SalvadorEl Salvador coffee had an undeservingly poor reputation for years, marred mostly by the inability to deliver coffee of high quality in an unstable political climate. Unfortunately, agriculture.... The farm is owned by the Duarte family, whose have a long history farming coffee in El Salvador. San Luis is more than 100 years old, and the decades-old BourbonA coffee cultivar; a cross between Typica and Bourbon, originally grown in Brazil: Mundo Novo is a commercial coffee cultivar; a natural hybrid between "Sumatra" and Red Bourbon,... trunks you see are a testament to its age!
At 30 manzanas in size, San Luis is a decent chunk of land broken into 12 different plots throughout Ataco. Originally, the farm was planted almost entirely in Bourbon. But a decade ago coffee leaf rust killed off a lot of the original trees, causing the Duarte’s to rethink the varietal makeup of the farm in the hopes of revitalizing production.
Instead of following the understandable trend of replanting the entire farm in disease resistant hybrids, they chose to diversify their plant selection between older Bourbon and Typica types, and hybrids that are known for good cup potential and high yield. This translated to stumping a lot of the old Bourbon to promote new growth (the massive stumps are truly a sight to behold!), and planting other varieties like Tabi, Castillo
Castillo is a selection of the Colombia cultivar that has become the most commonly grown coffee in Colombia. It is preferred to the older resistant variety, Variedad Colombia..., H1, and even some CaturraCatimor is a broad group of cultivars derived from a Hibrido de Timor (HdT) and Caturra cross, highly productive, sometimes with inferior cup flavor. The main issue is... and PacamaraAs the name implies, Pacamara is a large bean cultivar, a cross between Pacas and Maragogype with unique flavor properties. This variant originated in El Salvador in 1958,..., to help hedge against risk a bit.
Last year we bought a small 6 bag lot of dry processDry process coffee is a method for taking the fruit from the tree to an exportable green bean. The whole intact coffee cherry is dried in the sun... coffee from San Luis, along with several larger lots from their other farms. The cup quality was outstanding, and I think our customers agreed as it barely lasted a week on the site! We were thrilled to hear they were producing a lot more dry process coffee this year, and managed to contract 40 bags that we hope to make available before Summer.
