San Blas - El Salvador 2014 Verified listing

History of the Farm:

San Blas is owned by the company Monte San Blas S.A. de C.V. since 2004. However, the farm accounts with an extensive history of quality production.

San Blas is an Estate with a total extension of 150 Ha, although only 122 Ha are cultivated with coffee, and close to 70Ha are actively producing at this time. It is nestled in the top of the Ilamatepeq Volcano (also known as Santa Ana) in the West region of El Salvador . This is a true wild forest farm, since its coffee plantation is composed of the traditional Red Bourbón, and Orange and Yellow Bourbón, an exotic and rare variety from the Arabica, with trees that reach more than 16 feet tall!

In most of the plantation, a cultural practice known as “agobio” (bending of the tree to stimulate the growth of new sprouts) has been performed. This makes it possible to regenerate the plantation and replace old trees in a gradual manner.

Its volcanic soils have all the nutrients needed in order to nourish coffee cherries for full development.

Since the Ilamatepeq Volcano is active, San Blas was directly affected by the last eruption on 2005. However, this event has contributed to increase the fertility of the soil and enhance the quality of San Blas’ coffee.

For this year’s COE, after evaluating each day’s lot delivered at the Tres Rios mill, we picked the best out of the best in order to complete the competition lot. It required a lot of effort to do this work but we feel very proud in having placed the farm in the Top Ten of COE 2014. We previously had the opportunity to win COE in its 2012 edition ranking #21 in that occasion, so we feel very proud of increasing our score 11 positions in the ranking table.

We are so thankful to God in first place for allowing us to have the required conditions at the farm and be able to harvest such a great quality. In addition we know that the hard work of all coffee pickers and the permanent workers who performed all the agricultural tasks in a timely and effective manner, made it possible to get these outstanding results.

We are very optimistic for the future, since we know that with COE recognition we now have better chances to expand our buyers as well as getting more income to invest back in the farm.