Artisan Roast - Peña Redonda - El Salvador - Washed

A viscous, syrupy and super sweet coffee. Flavours of papaya, mandarin orange and milk chocolate lead onto a silky smooth mouthfeel.

Peña Redonda is a small multi-award winning farm near La Palma in Chalatenango. It's a small eight hectare farm, half covered by natural forest, some taken up by a huge boulder (hence the farm name), and of the remaining cultivated area just under two hectares are planted with the variety pacamara. Owner Carlos Lemus has won the Cup of Excellence award a number of times and is equally adept at turning his hand to either washed or honey processed coffees. Carlos brings his Pacamara from Peña Redonda down the hill to a processing area near La Palma, and the raised beds at the site are a rainbow of different colours of parchment coffee. These colours are the result of varying sun drying times, all carefully managed, and offering differing levels of ferment and resulting flavour profile. It's a luxury to be able to be offered such a selection of coffee and from the honey process and washed process coffees from the farm this year have selected a washed process Pacamara micro-lot.

Pacamara is a hybrid between the cultivars pacas and maragogype and was developed in El Salvador. It's distinctive tropical fruit flavours and syrupy finish set it aside from other Arabica cultivars and while other countries, notably Guatemala have set aside plots of land for Pacamara, it's spritual home remains El Salvador and in Chalatenango it thrives.

We've roasted this lot to bring out the vibrant tropical fruit notes of papaya, passion fruit and orange citrus. These flavours have been refined by the washed process as has the underlying dense, sweet and syrupy mouthfeel. The often bright acidity profile of the cultivar has been balanced by the processing and it adds a medium-intensity long lasting and juicy balance to the finish.

LETTERBOX friendly (single bag): YES