Christmas Coffee | El Salvador (Los Pirineos)

This is our second time working Gilberto Baraona & his Los Pirineos farm. Much of this farm was destroyed or abandoned during El Salvador's civil war from 1980-1992. This coffee is from Las Palmas, a block of land that was added to the farm as part of the rebuilding effort.

Gilberto is well known for experimenting with different varieties and processing methods and this coffee from Las Palmas has been shade dried, a drying method which has been employed with great success in some African coffee producing countries.

Shade drying involves transferring the beans after washing to skin drying tables where they are intensely sorted under shade. This shade makes it easier to spot defects on the wet parchments and it also prevents damage to the beans by direct sunlight at a critical point in their drying process. This coffee's brightness and clarity is also in part due to slow drying caused by the cool and misty climate of the farm's mountain.