La Ilusion – El Salvador

An anaerobic natural produced by the Salaverria family in El Salvador. For this particular lot, cherries were fermented in tanks for approximately 80 hours.

La Ilusion is one of this producers smaller farms. It’s 10 hectares grown at about 1540 masl. It’s 100% traditional Bourbon. The farm have performed very well for us the last years with complex and sweet Salvadorian Bourbons. The producer is innovative in ways of processing and farming. They separate everything by days of picking and do different processes, fermentation and drying techniques depending on capacity and potential of the particular lot. In this case it is mechanically demucilaged before it is soaked under clean water over night and then carefully dried on patio. They manage the drying times by building up layers and resting the coffees in piles.

This farm is part of a project with an El Salvadorian producer, Jose Antonio Salaverria and he’s two sons Andres Salaverria and Jose Antonio Salaverria the younger. They are now the 6th generation of coffee producers. The ancestors started with coffee in Huachapan. Jose Antonio Senior was offered a house from he’s father in 1970, but told him he wanted a instead. And he was given Finca Los Nogales, that’s still in the family and one of the farms we are buying from the group.

The coffees from the different farms are all processed at their central mill, Las Cruces. They bought Beneficio Las Cruses in 1990 and have done a lot of improvements since then. A lot of their success is based on their passion for coffee. They have been hard working and realistic, patient and focused on quality to make it sustainable. They have also managed to build a great team. Jose Antonio consider the workers and the team as the biggest asset.