El Salvador: Finca San José, Elefante, Washed

Lime zest and white sugar burst out of the cup, bright and punchy, before the sweet chocolate of bourbon biscuits takes over. Delicate white grape and caramel on the aftertaste bring it all together.

Gloria Rodríguez is a name you'll probably recognise if you've been brewing with us for a while. We've been buying her coffee since 2009, and year after year her lots are some of the most consistent, characterful coffees on our table. She's a fourth-generation coffee grower who oversees six farms in the Apaneca-Ilamatepec mountain range with the support of her siblings and family: San José, Mamatita, El Porvenir, Nejapa, Nueva Granada, and La Lagunita – thirty-eight hectares in total. Gloria has broken gender barriers in an industry traditionally dominated by men, personally supervising every step at the farm level. To find out more about Gloria and her family's remarkable story, have a read of our producer page.

This lot, though, is something a bit special. It's the result of a sharp-eyed varietal observation by Gloria's son-in-law, Luis Rodriguez. Luis is a serious figure in the coffee world – a licensed Q Grader, Q Processing Professional, founder of the Salvadoran Coffee School, president of the Salvadoran Coffee Cuppers Association, and Head Judge for the Cup of Excellence programme since 2021. He's been involved with CoE since co-coordinating El Salvador's first ever programme back in 2003. The point being: when Luis spots something unusual, he knows exactly what he's looking at.

Some years ago, while walking around Finca San José checking for ripeness, Luis ended up in front of a huge cluster of cherries that grabbed his attention. This wasn't just a productive branch – this was a genuinely different tree. With the help of Gloria, María José, and Antonio, he harvested roughly twelve kilos of cherries from it. They called it "Bourbon on steroids." Everything about the plant fascinated him. One of the most striking features was the amount of mucilage inside each cherry – just over twice as much as other varietals on the farm, with individual cherries yielding up to 9–15 drops of mucilage. The cherries themselves are nearly twice the weight of a standard Bourbon. Antonio hand-processed the small harvest, and after a few weeks the sample was ready to cup. Even in that first tasting at the family home, the fruit character and sweetness were unmistakable.

Due to the size of the coffee cherries, they named this variety Elefante. But here's the thing – despite the massive cherries, the beans themselves are very similar in size to the Bourbon planted on the rest of the farm. Don't expect big beans just because this coffee is called Elefante. It's the fruit on the tree that's enormous, not the seed inside.

The family has since worked with World Coffee Research (WCR) on genetic testing, which confirmed that Elefante is a natural cross between an Ethiopian landrace varietal and Bourbon. That Ethiopian heritage shows in the cup – the floral character, the complexity, the aromatic depth – while the Bourbon genetics bring the clean sweetness and structure that El Salvador is known for. Elefante is a low-yield variety with a high cherry-to-green-bean ratio, meaning less green coffee per kilo of cherry compared to Bourbon, but what it lacks in volume it more than makes up for in cup quality. The variety has placed consistently in El Salvador's Cup of Excellence: 3rd in 2017, 7th in 2018, and 6th in 2023 (the last entry scoring 89.54, one of only two washed coffees in that year's top placings). The family continues to plant seedlings and screen for the most promising phenotypes, with the goal of securing an elite varietal line.

Finca San José sits on the northwestern slope of an extinct volcanic crater in the department of Ahuachapán, at an average altitude of 1,500 metres. The mountain slopes are fully shaded by pepeto, inga, and other native trees that protect the coffee and support the local ecosystem – it's a farm rich in biodiversity, with everything from armadillos and grey foxes to turquoise-browed motmots. The volcanic crater also holds a small lagoon, Laguna de Las Ninfas, known for its water lilies. The combination of rich clay loam soil, a cool average temperature of 17°C, and around 2,500mm of annual rainfall creates an ideal microclimate for speciality coffee production. The farm primarily grows Red Bourbon, with smaller amounts of Orange and Yellow Bourbon alongside the Elefante.

San José is Gloria's favourite of her farms. The coffee-growing story here stretches back to 1815, when her great-grandparents José María and Josefina Rodríguez planted the first trees by hand. The farm passed through generations – to their son Israel, then to José María Rodríguez Herrera (Gloria's father) – before coming to Gloria. The original property was once larger but was divided among Gloria's father and his three brothers. Her father later bought back land from one brother, recombining it into the San José we know today – still relatively small by El Salvador standards at around 10 hectares. Until recently, all the plants on the farm were ones her father had planted. Productivity has been dropping off as the trees age, so Gloria's started replanting – though she admits to being sad about removing the coffee trees her father put in the ground. So far about a third are new, while two-thirds are still the original plants, now around 60 years old.

One of the things we love about Gloria's farms is how her team, led by foreman Antonio "Tonio" Avelino, still use traditional Salvadorean techniques that are largely forgotten on newer, more standardised farms. A great example is agobio and agobio de raíz. The word agobio translates roughly as "burden" – a reference to how a coffee tree bends when its branches are heavy with fruit. The technique involves deliberately bending a young coffee plant at its base and running it horizontal. Upright branches grow off this trunk, each producing their own lateral branches. The result is that one seedling effectively provides four or more productive plants sharing a single root system. Agobio de raíz goes even further – the young plant is bent at the root, with the uprights growing up through the soil. It's a genuinely fascinating piece of coffee heritage, and you can see what it looks like in the final image associated with this coffee.

Gloria works under strict speciality coffee standards across all her farms. Only fully ripe cherries are harvested, milling is carefully controlled, and pruning is done with real intention. Pickers are selected from her staff based on their experience and understanding of what's needed to produce high-quality coffee, and Gloria supervises the whole process directly with the support of Tonio.

• Country: El Salvador
• Department: Ahuachapán
• Municipality: Apaneca
• Nearest city: El Saitillal
• Producer: Gloria Rodríguez
• Farm manager: Antonio Avelino
• Farm: Finca San José
• Elevation: 1,500 m.a.s.l.
• Variety: Elefante
• Processing method: Washed
• Average annual rainfall: 2,500mm
• Average temperature: 17°C
• Type of soil: Clay loam
• Type of shade: Pepeto, inga sp., and other native trees
• Typical native fauna: Armadillo, grey fox, agouti, pocket gopher, magpie, turquoise-browed motmot

Medium Dark. We're keeping this roast fairly quick through the early stages but pushing it right to the cusp of second crack. That level of development is important here – it's what lets the lime zest acidity resolve into something bright and clean rather than sharp, and it brings the bourbon biscuit chocolate character forward. The Elefante varietal's high mucilage content means there's a lot of natural sweetness to work with, so the deeper roast doesn't flatten the cup – it rounds it out, giving body and structure while the white grape and caramel notes develop on the finish. If you're roasting at home, listen for those first pops of second crack and drop promptly. Go too far past and you'll lose the brightness that makes this coffee sing.

Cupping Notes: Lime zest, bourbon biscuit, white grape.

Cup of Excellence Cupping Scores

• Clean Cup: 6.5/8
• Sweetness: 6.5/8
• Acidity: 6.5/8
• Mouthfeel: 6/8
• Flavour: 6/8
• Aftertaste: 6.5/8
• Balance: 6.5/8
• Overall: 6.5/8
• Correction: +36
• Total: 87/100

If you'd like to find out more about how we score coffees, make sure to read our blog post "What Do Coffee Cupping Scores Actually Mean?"