Pushing Boundaries.
When we originally started buying coffee from Finca Natamaya in El Salvador, the farm was just beginning to transition from commodity coffee to specialty coffee farming. That meant a lot of investment in equipment for processing, as well as a big investment in the time, energy, and labor involved in sorting through ripe coffee cherries during picking.
Another part of that process was building new lots of coffee — Ruby helped by cupping over fifty individual lots of coffee from different areas of the farm, and the feedback provided helped Hermann and Nena Mendez organize how coffee is grouped at Natamaya.
The crown jewel of Natamaya, though, was it's budding experimental variety garden. The first time Jared visited the farm, Natamaya was just starting the conversion to high-end specialty lots. There was an empty plot of land on one of the higher slopes that Hermann explained was going to be utilized for planting the sought after auction favorite Gesha variety, the reliable Kenya-centric SL-28 variety, and, finally, the hybrid of Pacas and Maragogipe: Pacamara. As Jared visited the farm in ensuing years, the plot was starting to develop, leading to the first Pacamara harvest two years, yielding a full bag, and eventually to this year’s harvest — eight bags exclusively produced for Ruby.
This experimental area is at the highest elevations on the farm, contributing to the extra density and flavor qualities in this Pacamara harvest. As a variety, Pacamara is known for crisp acidity and plush fruit flavors, and this year's harvest from Natamaya showcases all the sweetness and body you'd expect from the farm with those complex fruit tones combined with it.