El Salvador San Ernesto Natural Coffee

We have pleasure in introducing you to a wonderful coffee we have sourced from El Salvador.

San Ernesto coffee farm dates back to the 1870s, when Mr Juan Urrutia planted coffee at high altitude in volcanic soil. His first crop was 27 sacks of coffee and over the last 150 years this coffee farm has expanded to cover nearly 1800 acres (560 hectares) of excellent shade grown coffee. Because of the location of the farm, the shade trees include typical native El Salvador types – Ingas, Pepeto, Eucalyptus, Cuje Negro and Cuje De Diro and the coffee is planted between 900 and 1800 metres above sea level. Approximately 2,100 mm of rain falls annually and with an average temperature band of 10-25°C is absolutely ideal for producing fine quality coffee.

Due to its mountainous location, San Ernesto Farm has two flowerings and therefore two crops of coffee per year, which is uncommon in the majority of coffee producing companies. These flowers are pollinated by over 259 different insect species and 120 migratory birds, who have over 140 hectares of completely natural unplanted forest as habitat. The coffee is fully replanted approximately every 20 years with an annual replanting taking place and any pruning of the plants done in the traditional manner, in which can be described as an ‘appreciative prune’. Urrutia’s Estate and San Ernesto Farm is a permanent source of work for many rural families and provides over 800 jobs annually, which include free food and transportation for the workers and daily payment.

The coffee mill that processes this coffee is called the Beneficio San Antonio and follows a ‘picked in the morning, processed in the afternoon’ method, offering either washed or natural coffees. We have opted to the natural process because even on this scale Urrutia is able to offer us 100% patio sun-dried beans, which means that this coffee works well in both filter and cafetière and espresso blends.

If you want to learn a bit more about Urrutia’s Estate you can see more from their own presentation / film here (the video starts just after 10 seconds in).