Region: Coatepeque, Santa Ana
Elevation: 1400-1600 masl
About: Finca Los Bellotos is a magical place, perched high up in the mountains close to the Santa Ana Volcano and overlooking the picture-perfect Lake Coatepeque, shrouded in mist for most of the day and creating a unique microclimate for growing coffee. It was here, back in 2008, that farm manager Ruperto Bernardino Merche stumbled across five unusual trees, their cherries smelling and tasting unlike anything else on the farm, with hints of peach, papaya, and mango. Genetic testing later revealed the trees had originated in the Agaro region of Ethiopia, somehow finding their way to El Salvador in the 1930s and surviving undiscovered for decades. This lot is grown from cuttings of those original five trees, and processed via the anaerobic honey sunset method, a technique refined by the Pacas family over several years, honey-processing the cherries before an extended, temperature-managed drying period. The result is a coffee of remarkable complexity, floral and tropical, with a silky, blackcurrant-laced finish.
