Artisan Roast - Peña Redonda Cup Of Excellence #12 El Salvador

Cup of Excellence is a program that discovers and selects coffee grown by quality focused farmers. Each year nine countries take part in a blind tasting selection process of up to five rounds. Winning coffees are awarded the Cup of Excellence award and are sold to gourmet coffee roasters through an internet auction. Over the last decade that the program has run in El Salvador the Chalatenango Mountains, an area towards the border with Honduras and Guatemala has become more and more recognised for producing some exceptional coffee.

In this years auction we were able to secure packs from the Peña Redonda farm near La Palma in Chalatenango. It is a very small eight hectare farm, half covered by natural forest and of the cultivated area just under two hectares are planted with the variety pacamara. Pacamara, a hybrid between the cultivars pacas and maragogype was developed in El Salvador and it's distinctive tropical fruit flavours and syrupy finish are very distinctive. While other countries, notably Guatemala have set aside plots of land for Pacamara, it's spritual home remains El Salvador.

We've roasted this lot to bring out the delicious milk chocolate flavour and supporting dense, sweet syrupy mouthfeel to their very best, whilst allowing some of the more subtle attributes to come through on the aftertaste. Flavours of passion fruit, caramel, vanilla, and papaya come through on the finish and are balanced by a supporting medium intensity of acidity that is long lasting, juicy, refreshing and complex.