El Salvador Finca Las Veraneras Black Honey

Jorge Cruz's farm, Finca Las Veraneras, sits in the western part of El Salvador.  His coffee producing efforts there are part of a larger agricultural effort.  Tierra Bendita, as it is called, is a small family business dedicated to agriculture close to El Salvador's border with Guatemala.  Its emphasis in farming is to work with nature to improve the soil using microorganisms, compost and natural fertilizers.  These agro-ecological farming practices yield healthy sustainable harvests in the production of coffee, cocoa, honey, plantains, and basic grains commodities.

Tierra Bendita began operations in 1998 with sugarcane in the western coastal zone in Ahuachapan, moving in recent years towards crop diversification through agroforestry programs.  Today, the project deals with the cultivation of cacao, coffee, plantain, and tropical timber trees as part of initiatives aimed at recovering lost forests in the coastal zone.

So, as you can see, this is a very special coffee if for no other reason than the incredible efforts being made in the farming practices; but, there's even more!  It's an absolutely delicious coffee and unique in its properties in the cup.  We've never encountered a coffee that tastes so much like the pulp of coffee fruit (or "cherry") itself.  It is a sweet, delicate, and floral flavor profile.  Each sip transports us back to our visits to some of the coffee farms we have worked with where we would pluck a few ripe and juicy coffee "cherries" from the trees and pop them into our mouths.  

You may never make it to a coffee farm, but drinking a cup of this coffee will give you an idea of what it's like to taste the fresh fruit of a coffee shrub.

Flavor Notes: Cascara (Coffee Cherry), Tropical Fruits, Chocolate, Sweet