Description

As El Salvador continues to bounce back after the devastating effects of coffee-leaf rust, farmers are committed to trying to preserve as much of their heirloom varieties as possible, to mixed results. With yields down as much as 50 percent in places, it is a time of crossroads for Salvadoran producers, who face difficult decisions about what plants to cultivate in the incredibly rich volcanic soils.

One of Café Imports’s green-coffee buyers, Piero Cristiani, is from El Salvador, and his mother has been involved in the coffee industry for decades, imbuing Piero with a special passion for discovering and highlighting the best coffees the country has to offer. He is based in El Salvador for a portion of the year, which allows him to develop and maintain strong relationships there, and to keep an eye on the quality and volume of coffees year by year.

Thanks to his vision and initiative, we have been able to buy coffee in parchment and do the dry milling and final sorting ourselves, which not only provides more up-front finances for producers but also allows us to offer a range of coffee lots that are separated by process, variety, and even screen size, as we’ve had success with blended peaberry lots from various quality-focused growers in the Chalatenango region in particular. Of course, we also have more standard single-producer microlots, and are also working toward more Regional lots and perhaps even a version of our Best Cup competition to contribute to the strengthening of Salvadoran coffee for generations to come.