Kilimanjaro farm is located on the highlands of the Santa Ana Volcano or Ilamatepec, 40 minutes away from the city of Santa Ana. The Batlle family purchased the farm in 1983, and are the third generation of a coffee family. Aida Batlle (the daughter) takes care of this coffee plantation which is nearly 40 years old, and located in one of the oldest coffee-growing areas in the country. She is a "hands-on" coffee grower, seen often at the farm and monitoring all the aspects of the harvest. This coffee was the 1st place winner in the first Cup of Excellence held in El Salvador, 2003. To win the 1st place award, they pay the workers well, with salaries double the usual rates, but also demand very high standards in picking and processing. The neat thing about Aida is, after winning, she has decided to take the small production from this 30-hectare farm and distribute it among just a few buyers. We get very little. And we all pay a healthy price for the coffee to support the farm's improvement. It's win-win for everyone. And this coffee is worth the effort - it's a fantastic, dynamic Central American coffee. The farm is on the Santa Ana volcanic slopes, and is planted with 80% Kenya cultivar, 15% Bourbon and 5% Pacas. There are definite hints of the Kenya character in this cup. Altitude is 1450 meters (4750 feet) and there are diverse shade trees on the farm including Pepeto Peludo, Copalchí, Cypress, Avocado and Peach. The cup has an intense dry fragrance; strong caramel sweetness, dark fruits and berry notes. The wet aromatics have an almost minty liveliness to them, with honey and butter as well. There's a very sweet cinnamon spice in the cup at the lighter roast level, pairing well with orange tea notes. At the lighter roasts there is jasmine flower, peppermint, a crisp brightness, with fresh raspberry and currant fruits, Meyer lemon, and black tea. The fruits have a winey tonality to them. The body is medium, and pairs well with a malty-sweet roast taste at City+ roast. The finish has fresh tea with lemon and mint. The volatile aromas on the cup are just fantastic. It is the best of what really high grown Central coffees can be ...it's what many other coffees wish they could be. After you cup a lot of Centrals, you key in on the qualities that this cup has in abundance and amplitude. And Aida's Kilimanjaro coffee shows that diligence, faith and investment in a farm can really pay off.

This coffee is part of our direct trade Farm Gate pricing transparency program.

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Finca Matalapa is a classic estate coffee, long before there were mini-mills and micro-lots. It has a complete independent mill to service the farm, from the tree through wet-processing, patio drying, hulling and preparation, to loading the coffee in jute bags and packing the shipping container. The mill is filled with fantastic, classic coffee equipment painted in bold colors. And it's the passion of the owner, Vickie Ann Dalton de Diaz, and the love of archaic machinery on the part of her husband that keeps the mill running and the coffee tasting so wonderful! Finca Matalapa is in the Libertad area, not far from the capital of San Salvador, on a west-facing slop ranging from 1200 meters up to the ridge top at 1350 meters. It's a 4th generation coffee estate totaling 120 hectares and was founded in the late 1800's by Fidelia Lima, great grandmother of the Vickie. She maintains 14 acres of virgin tropical forest and keeps her coffee plants shaded with over forty varieties of larger trees. The cup has the character I aspire to find in El Salvador Bourbon-type coffees, though because of the strong winds in the area they find the native Salvador Pacas varietal to fare better in this region. Pacas is a natural mutation of the Bourbon varietal. The coffee has great balance and sweet accent notes. The dry fragrance has sweet citrus, praline and floral notes at City+, and a syrupy molasses sweetness at FC roast. You can find the same sweet, mild citrus in the wet aroma, with syrupy malty notes. The cup is vividly bright, with bracing orange acidity, laced with slight floral bits. As it cools my lighter roasts (City+) became more and more bright and dynamic, lemony with a cinnamon note. Light roasts have a correspondingly light body, but it fits the high-toned, refreshing flavor profile overall. I preferred this roast level for brewed coffee; the finish is high-toned and sweet. But this coffee works with a wide range of roasts and Full City roasts produce a great bittersweet cup at darker levels. It's the brighter, livelier version of the Matalapa flat bean coffee, and excellent brewed in a vacuum pot, dripper or Technivorm.

This coffee is part of our direct trade Farm Gate pricing transparency program.

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There's some debate about what coffee is the most exclusive, rarest, most outstanding in the cup ... a debate I always find particularly elitist and boring. There is no single "excellent coffee" out there, it's not a peak you scale with one dramatic spire, and one perfect little cup of coffee waiting for you on top. If you market coffee packaged in a wine bottle, grown on a trellis, or scavenged from rodent excrement, it doesn't make it good or even rare. It's just a bunch of hoopla. Further, if you try to distinguish a set of truly excellent coffees, carefully processed, with dynamic cup character, you still end up with no single winner, since excellence in coffee means suiting the polymorphus aspects of the human senses. Luckily, great coffees are as diverse as our senses used to appreciate them. So given all my sidestepping and hesitations, if someone really turned the screws on me, and made me confess what coffee has the most time, care, passion invested in it, and reflects this in the cup, it would be Aida's Grand Reserve. Aida is Aida Batlle, who has several small farms of great distinction on the Santa Ana Volcano. (You can read about Aida in our Kilimanjaro review). Like no other small-lot coffee I have tasted (or even heard about), Aida's Grand Reserve is the product of careful propagation, harvesting, picking, processing, and blending. Yes, blending, just as a master vintner might blend from particular parts of an estate to achieve a special reserve, Aida has selected pickings from her 3 small farms, Finca Kilimanjaro, Los Alpes and Mauritania, cupped and blended them to form the Grand Reserve. This involves traditional wet processing, as well as a very difficult "raisin coffee" component, in which the coffee cherry is allowed to dry partly on the tree, until the red exterior darkens and wrinkles slightly. You get the feeling with this lot that every single little green bean was inspected under a microscope and chosen for this lot. (The burlap bags we received this in are double-layered, hand inked, with sewn-on batik labeling, inside the coffee is carefully vacuum-packed). The cup has ton's of character; it's no lightweight Central. Dry fragrance has great intensity, dark semi-sweet chocolate, Dutch cocoa hints and fruited layers too, dried plum. I get a lot of candy-like scents, and even cotton candy too. The wet aromatic has ample amounts of chocolate, strawberry sherbert, and, at darker roasts, Monukka Raisin. The cup has character you might find in a more brooding type of Kenya, a Kirinyaga-region coffee for example, with pungency, winy dark fruited notes, sweet dried fruit (again I think of the Monukka varietal raisin), dark ripe Bing cherry, and semi-sweet chocolate. As I said before, this is a heavyweight cup for a Central, with brooding deep body, and long, long aftertaste marked by pungent spice tones and black pepper. While the long aftertaste has this pungency, as it cools the cup leaves a very "juicy" last impression. As far as Central go, or other high priced coffees, the Aida's Grand Reserve is unique because it has tons of body, and a more intense, bold character in general. Panama Esmeralda Gesha may have the high notes, but this coffee has the balance and almost aggressive cup character. It's fantastic stuff. So I'll just cave in completely: here we have the rarest, most exotic, and most excellent coffee since man put coffee bean to fire and soaked in water! Okay, seriously, this is one of the most intense and complex Centrals I have ever experienced. Roast it as gifts, for after a special dinner, or just keep it for yourself. It's great stuff.

This coffee is part of our direct trade Farm Gate pricing transparency program.

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Siberia is a farm with a great track record in the Cup of Excellence for their Bourbon coffees, and we offered the Bourbon lot last season. We bought it before as a 23rd place coffee in the Cup of Excellence, and it has been as high as 6th place in previous competitions. This year I was really, really impressed with a Pacamara coffee from Siberia; I didn't know they even grew Pacamara! This coffee is from one of the best, most prolific coffee areas in Santa Ana, grown at 1450 meters. We really didn't need more El Salvador coffee, nor another Pacamara, but it was too good to pass up! So sweet, floral, brightly fruited. This coffee can be a little hard to roast, partly due to the large bean size. In air roasters, cut back on the batch a little. It seems to finish fast, so when you hear first crack start, pay close attention and be prepared, or you may miss your roast level target. And for that I recommend City+ to Full City ... the dry fragrance is beautiful, sweet floral roast notes, red fruits, cane sugar. The wet aroma is sooo sweet: light brown sugar, caramelized. I get cinnamon toast notes, and soft floral accents. The cup has juicy red apple flavors, hibiscus floralness, like the tea called "Jamaica" (pronounced Ha-my-ka) in Latin countries. It's sweet, and the aromas persist through the sapid flavors on the palate; it has what they call "after-nose". I liked the darker roasts I did as well, with dark brown sugar flavors and a more pungent spice note. But I admit I did some of those by accident. Keep an eye on this coffee in the roaster!

Note: Because of the large bean size of this coffee, I strongly recommend that you measure this out by weight, not by volume, when brewing.

This coffee is part of our direct trade Farm Gate pricing transparency program.

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