El Salvador Cup of Excellence in the House
Notice how the green coffee bean on the left is twice the size of the one on the right? The coffee on the left is our new El Salvador La Montana-La Hondurita ( the one on the right is our lovely Guatemala Hue Hue Tenango Finca Vista Hermosa). The El Salvador is a Pacamara varietal - a cross between a Paca and a Maragogype (pronounced mara-go-hee-pay). Maragogype beans are often called "elephant beans" because of their enormous size. As you can see, the Pacamara has inhereted the freakish size quality from the Maragogype! The enormous size of this bean stood out on the cupping table (or cupping counter as was the case for the El Sal CoE's..we cupped them in our kitchen!). Bigger doesn't always mean better but in this case..the coffee is just stellar! It won us over as well as the Cup of Excellence judges who ranked it #3 and gave it a score of 91.46. It is now available for your drinking pleasure and highly recommended as a holiday treat for your favorite coffee nerd.
Raoul Ochoa and Jose Montiel, owners of two small farms in the Alotepec-Metapan mountain range in the northwestern region of El Salvador, combined their small lots and were awarded 3rd place in the 2006 El Salvador Cup of Excellence competition. This stunning coffee caught our attention during the cupping not only for its luscious cup qualities but also for its abnormally large bean size. This coffee is a Pacamara – a hybrid of the Paca and Maragogype varietals. This uncommon varietal, in the hands of Raoul and Jose (who use all organic farming matter & pay extra wages for their workers to pick only the perfectly ripe cherries), yields a wonderfully elegant cup of coffee; silky in body and wonderfully clean, bursting with ripe cherries, mango and nectarine with a hint of sage and rhubarb in the finish.
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