The technology behind
The technology behind Just add filtered water to enjoy one of our picks of the season. These Steeped bags are a simple and elegant way to present a selection of the coffees we find most exciting, removing many brewing variables, and allowing quality and character to shine. Individual doses are ground and sealed in nitrogen-flushed packages, maintaining the clear aromatic character of freshly ground coffee, for over a year after roasting.
Raul Rivera
This is our sixth year buying coffee from Jorge Raul Rivera. Raul is a second generation coffee producer, based just outside the town of La Palma, in the far north-west of El Salvador, close to the border with Honduras. His farm, Finca Santa Rosa, is located at around 1550 masl on the slopes of El Pital, El Salvador’s highest point. The farm is planted mainly with the famed Salvadoran varietal Pacamara, and has produced some of the country’s highest quality coffees in recent years.
Finca Santa Rosa
Jorge Raul Rivera Sr. began growing coffee in the region around La Palma in 1979. He was one of the first to grow coffee in the area, and one of the few that stayed during El Salvador’s brutal civil war, as many others abandoned their land, sold cheap and fled into neighbouring Honduras. As El Salvador began to settle again after the war, the Riveras bought the land that would become Finca Santa Rosa, and began to grow timber, due to government subsidies aiming to help the post-war rebuilding effort. In 2003, the Cup of Excellence came to El Salvador, a great showcase for the first few speciality coffee producers in the country. The Riveras saw a prime opportunity; if they could use the perfect conditions at Santa Rosa to produce micro-lots of high enough quality, they could fetch high prices at the Cup of Excellence auctions, making their farm highly profitable. They planted their farm with Pacamara, famed for high quality cups, and set off in pursuit of the Cup of Excellence crown.
Years of work have resulted in three overall wins, in 2014, 2017 and 2019, all with their honey-processed Pacamara. The pine from the old timber plantations has been retained as shade for the coffee, always reminding us of a Scandinavian pine forest during our visits. The pine needles capture moisture from evening mists and distribute it in the soil, while providing a source of organic material when they fall. Visiting Raul is always a treat, he’s a genuinely passionate professional whose enthusiasm is rather infectious; Raul is always keen to share his knowledge, nerding coffee, whisky and cars. This year he was keen to show us a new plot of Geisha, with a small harvest expected in 2024. The pride he takes in every single detail of the farm and step of the process is obvious, and this translates into the incredibly high quality lots of coffee he is able to produce.
This is the first time in a few years that we’ve been able to share a washed Pacamara lot from Raul, with a more crisp and fresh flavour profile than the honey and natural lots we share each year. Here, the floral notes of the Pacamara shine clearly, backed up by the typical chocolate and orange notes we find in Raul’s coffees, here as sweet and round milk chocolate, and fresh, juicy blood orange.