El Salvador El Carmen Giesha السلفادور ال كارمين قيشا

The Story Behind This Coffee

El Carmen Estate is located at 1,300m above sea level in El Salvador’s Apaneca-Ilamatepec mountain range, one of Central America’s prime specialty coffee producing areas. The estate has been farmed by the Alfaro family for over a century.

El Carmen lies in the heart of El Salvador’s main ‘protected highway’ of forest, a part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor System that stretches all the way from Mexico down to Panama. In El Salvador, where more than 80% of the country’s coffee is produced under shade, this eco-system is based mainly in the coffee forest. 

For this reason, coffee farms such as El Carmen play a vital role as a sanctuary for hundreds of the migratory and native bird species found in this part of the world. The estate was founded in the middle of the 19^th century when Antonio José Alfaro acquired a plot of land near the village of Ataco – meaning ‘Site of Elevated Springs’ in the indigenous Nahuatl language – where he started to produce coffee. 

His son, Agustin Alfaro, founder of the Salvadoran National Coffee Company, followed in his father’s footsteps and established El Carmen as one of El Salvador’s leading exporters. His efforts were continued by Antonio Alfaro, head of the third generation of this coffee family and are carried through today by Fernando Alfaro, the fourth generation of his family to farm coffee.

El Carmen is an extremely well-run specialty estate and is managed with scrupulous attention detail, with great emphasis placed on maintaining the identity of each lot from the moment its coffee cherries are harvested until the point when the green beans are ready for export. The farm's 5 hectares sit on volcanic soil, under approximately 60% shade cover, which is required for the coffee to ripen evenly. Prior to the rainy season, shade trees are then pruned to about 40% shade to allow the access of light necessary for new foliage growth.

This Geisha lot underwent a 144-hour anaerobic natural process. Cherrieswere hand picked only when perfectly ripe and delivered to the on-farm mill, where they were sorted for quality. They were then placed into sealed containers with water and a cocktail of mountain microorganisms, fungus and bacteria to ferment anaerobically, slowing fermentation and preventing mould growth. Once fermentation was complete, cherries were spread on raised African beds to dry in open sun, with constant raking throughout to prevent mould development. Finally, the beans are prepared and all defects removed and screened to uniform size.