El Salvador: Finca Argentina, Red Pacamara

Expect juicy orange notes with a gentle, restrained acidity. As the cup cools, sweet malted milk biscuit and a subtle chocolaty edge emerge, rounding out a smooth and easy-drinking profile.

You’ll find Finca Argentina in the Apaneca-Ilamtepec mountain range, surrounded by natural hot springs. It’s located near the town of Turin in the Ahuachapán department, at an altitude of 1,300 masl. The estate is separated into 7 areas or 'tablons', each of these unique plots are approximately 6 hectares in size each, but some are smaller due to their location and other landscape characteristics.

We have been buying from Finca Argentina since 2008 and have seen a lot of changes and developments at the farm level over that time.  At the beginning of our relationship, Mauricio Martinez had inherited several coffee farms from his grandfather and was unsure what to do with them. Having just relocated to El Salvador from New York in 2008, where he'd been working as a city banker, his son Alejandro decided to help his father with some of his business interests and investments while looking for work in El Salvador. One of the farms, Finca Argentina, pricked Alé’s interest. He saw that the farm once yielded a lot of coffee but was producing a fraction of its old harvest. Mauricio gave him permission to see what could be done to make the farm successful again.

Alé found out the farm had been classified for a Q auction back in 2005. Thinking there may be a specialty buyer out there; he and his London-based cousin went about sending samples to coffee roasters anywhere they could. One of those samples arrived with us; we liked the coffee, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Fast forward 16 years and Mauricio (still the owner) moved to Canada at the start of 2024, following Alejandro who has been living there for a while now. Mauricio is still involved in overseeing the farm remotely, though he relies on his farm manager and the team on site to do a good job and to keep him up to date. His daughter, Beatrix, has not been involved in coffee previously but she’s now working to become involved a little bit to help the family business. Although he’s living in Canada, Mauricio is still visiting El Salvador regularly to check in on things. Processing of the coffee is carried out at the Los Ausoles dry mill, who have a very good relationship with Mauricio and have shown good consistency and reliability for us as buyers.

Throughout the growing season at Finca Argentina, individual workers are given a lot of responsibility over pruning and managing trees. On many farms, pruning would be quite regimented (e.g. every other tree gets a skeleton prune in this section) whereas Finca Argentina are leaving these decisions much more up to the knowledge of the staff, deciding on a plant-by-plant basis what kind of pruning is needed when they work through an area. It is easy to ruin coffee production on trees if you don’t make the right pruning choices, so this shows a lot of trust and is only possible when they retain and develop their workers’ skills long term.

El Salvador has been hit hard by the wider labour shortage impacting other Central American countries. Luckily Finca Argentina are currently managing well, but they are having to consider more ways to retain necessary numbers of staff during harvest season. The Martinez family employ 50 people during the harvest and 30 the rest of the year. They contribute labour and materials to improve infrastructure in their community’s towns, and grow 25 kg of corn annually for each person. They’re also implementing more ecological management: using compost and other organic products to minimise environmental impact, and intercropping beans to enrich soil. Their work has improved the land’s biodiversity and cup quality, and the future for Finca Argentina is looking very bright!

• Country: El Salvador
• District: Ahuachapán
• Municipality: Ahuachapán
• Nearest city: Turin
• Farm: Finca Argentina
• Producer: Mauricio Martinez
  
• Dry mill: Los Ausoles
• Elevation: 1,300 m.a.s.l.
• Variety: Red Pacamara
• Processing method: Natural
• GPS: 13°56'29.4"N 89°47'04.1"W

Tasting notes: Orange, malted milk biscuit, chocolate.

• Clean cup: (1–8): 6.5
• Sweetness: (1–8): 6.5
• Acidity: (1–8): 6
• Mouthfeel: (1–8): 6
• Flavour: (1–8): 6
• Aftertaste: (1–8): 6
• Balance: (1–8): 6.5
• Overall: (1–8): 6.5
• Correction: (+36): +36
• Total: (max. 100): 86

Medium: Keep this steady but don't let it go too far or you'll lose the elegant natural processing flavours which give this coffee it's character.