El Salvador

El Salvador may be among the smallest coffee-growing countries in the world, but the influence of its coffee industry is outsized, combining the rich traditions of its nineteenth-century estates with a twenty-first-century approach to innovation to produce some of Central America’s most distinctive coffees.

The emergence of El Salvador’s coffee industry in the second half of the nineteenth century was driven by vast coffee estates, many of which have been continuously owned and operated by the same families ever since they were founded. The best of these have been guardians of the country’s long-standing coffee traditions, maintaining the focus on quality that made El Salvador synonymous with producing a premium cup throughout the twentieth century.

During the latter half of the 1900s, many growers in neighboring countries embraced Caturra, a compact, high-yielding coffee variety that permits farmers to plant coffee with greater density and increase production. Others opted for hybrids created to resist disease and maximize yield, with limited focus on quality. But El Salvador’s storied estates stayed the course, continuing to plant the Bourbon coffee variety that helped the country develop its sterling reputation for quality, and Pacas, a Bourbon selection named for the Salvadoran grower who was instrumental in identifying it.

Today Intelligentsia’s Direct Trade partner network in El Salvador reflects both the establishment and the innovative, anchored by the venerable estates but joined more recently by new entrants into the specialty market.

Álvarez is a formidable name in Salvadoran coffee and one of the pioneers of the country’s coffee industry. In the second half of the nineteenth century, a small group of entrepreneurs saw enormous opportunity in coffee and seized upon it, mobilizing investments in production and processing while persuading the fledgling government of newly independent El Salvador to invest in the roads, rails, and ports necessary to bring Salvadoran coffee to market.

One of these entrepreneurs was Rafaél Álvarez Lalinde, who built a coffee empire in Santa Ana that anchored the country’s industry there. This included a world-class mill and a series of pristine farms on the north face of the Ilamatepec range in Santa Ana, the epicenter of the fabled Salvadoran coffee industry during its golden years. The coffee won awards for quality more than a century ago at the 1900 Paris Exposition, and the mill and farms were featured in a 1944 National Geographic story titled “Coffee Is King in El Salvador.” Don Rafaél’s mission wasn’t merely commercial, however—he was a celebrated philanthropist who took his obligation to the surrounding community seriously, funding hospitals and other public works in and around Santa Ana. Today, we have the honor and pleasure of working with three branches of the Álvarez family who are direct heirs to that vaunted legacy: Guillermo Álvarez at Malacara, Eduardo Álvarez at El Borbollón, and Patrick Murray Álvarez at Finca Majahual.

The Álvarez family established Finca Malacara in 1888 at what may be the most advantageous location in all of El Salvador’s coffeelands, located on a gentle grade on the north face of the Cordillera de Apaneca-Ilamatepec, nestled below the Santa Ana Volcano, near the village of Los Naranjos in Santa Ana. This 117-acre farm is protected from the strong Pacific Coast winds that rip through neighboring farms located on just the other side of the peak. As spectacular as Malacara’s location may be, however, what makes it truly extraordinary is the way it has been managed over more than 130 years: to produce high-quality coffee while building employment opportunities for people in the community. Guillermo “Epe” Álvarez Prunera and his sister, María de los Ángeles, the fourth-generation owners of the farm, are committed to upholding all aspects of that mandate.

Intelligentsia first started working with Epe and María de los Ángeles in 2003, when Malacara took top prize in the El Salvador Cup of Excellence (CoE) competition. The story of that CoE victory, and its fallout, embodies everything you need to know about Malacara and its owners. The winning lot was an elegant Bourbon varietal immaculately grown, harvested, and processed—a tribute to their hard work and effective management. But it was also a validation of a formula they inherited and honored, by then more than a century old: go all in on fully washed, shade-grown Bourbon. And what did Epe and María de los Ángeles do with the windfall they earned at the CoE auction? They reinvested it to improve the housing for their permanent farmworkers.

Since 2003, Malacara has implemented a number of innovations in the name of quality, adding Panamanian Geisha and Kenyan SL-28 to its Bourbon groves, refining its approach to wet-milling, and drying its best coffees on raised beds. But the core commitments on which Malacara was founded—a deep focus on coffee quality, environmental responsibility, and social impact—are stronger than ever.

El Borbollón is a quality-focused coffee mill in Santa Ana that has been at the center of our Direct Trade program in El Salvador from the very beginning. It is descended directly from the Álvarez family milling operations that were such a central focus of the 1944 feature in National Geographic, which raved about the scale of the processing facility and the innovative use of advanced technologies at the time. The mill featured in the article’s photos once operated on the grounds of what are today the offices of El Borbollón. The operation has expanded since then and relocated to a nearby lot that could accommodate its growth.

Eduardo Álvarez has been at the head of El Borbollón since Intelligentsia started sourcing coffee directly from El Salvador back in 2003. Eduardo’s work processing coffee is informed by his work growing coffee, something he does at multiple farms scattered at high elevations around Santa Ana. The family coffee tradition continues at El Borbollón, as Eduardo’s son and namesake has become an instrumental part of the family business, helping to refine processes of technological innovation and quality-control protocols at the plant as a fifth-generation Álvarez leading El Salvador’s coffee sector into the future.

Finca Matalapa is a living monument to coffee’s old and new paths—at the same time a testament to the golden era of El Salvador's coffee industry and a contemporary specialty operation consistently producing lots for some of the most discriminating buyers in the marketplace. The coffees reflect this heritage—traditional Salvadoran varieties grown and processed with a modern focus on quality.

It is impossible not to be impressed by the weight of history on a visit to Finca Matalapa. That’s partly because of Vickie Dalton Díaz, the fourth-generation grower who runs the operation, and her husband, Francisco. They are antique collectors who have filled their farmhouse and mill with artifacts from the farm's illustrious past, including a photo of Vickie's great-grandmother Fidelia, who established Finca Matalapa in the 1880s. The coffee groves are architectural in their design, with the coffee plants carefully spaced and the groves dotted with fruit and shade trees, traced with live barriers, and crosshatched with tall trees that serve as windbreaks.

But it may be at El Paraíso, the Finca Matalapa mill, where past and present meet most strikingly. The space was built more than a century ago with sturdy lumber from nearby forests, and it sits whitewashed and gleaming for visitors today. Still in operation are steam engines adorned with gears painted in bright colors, fire-engine red cast iron sorters manufactured in New York more than a hundred years ago, and an antique tractor designed locally by the farmer for whom the Pacas variety is named (a relative of Vickie’s). But Finca Matalapa and El Paraíso are not relics ready to be relegated to history.

Vickie remains committed to the traditional coffee varieties that made the farm and the entire El Salvador coffee sector famous—Bourbon and the local Bourbon selection, Pacas—and she has worked over recent years to introduce significant improvements to operations at the farm, where harvesting is exceptional, and the mill, which has transitioned fully from patio to raised-bed drying.