OUR OFFERINGS - LOS INMORTALES™, EL SALVADOR

Location:  Santa Ana, La Libertad
Varietal:  Bourbon
Altitude: 1450-1700 m
Harvest: January - March

Characteristics

Flavor: Melon, caramel, hazelnut
Acidity: Balanced, refined
Finish:  Crisp, ephemeral

Tasting Notes:

The honeysuckle aromatics draw you into a beautifully articulated cup of fruit flavors reminiscent  of honeydew melon and white grapes. The acidity is polite and refined, a backdrop to notes of caramel and hazelnut that blossom as the cup cools. An ephemeral finish concludes the taste experience – clean, crisp and gratifying.

Geoff’s Notes

Geoff Watts with Eduardo Alvarez and crew at Finca El Cerro.

The name Los Inmortales (“the Immortals”) conjures up images of Greek gods having a conversation at the peak of a fog-shrouded Mount Olympus or perhaps a group of superheroes banded together to combat oppressive villains. Either way, the name is not without import. It alludes to something worthy of our attention and carries with it a mystique that ignites the imagination.

Los Inmortales represents our best effort to create the most delicious and convincing coffee we can to represent El Salvador. Rather than rely on one farm to consistently reproduce greatness, we invest in many and choose the very top coffee each year to assemble our offering. Only the best coffees make it in, and over the course of a season, our Roasters fine-tune the coffee by adjusting the ratio of the individual estate coffees that make up the blend. The result is nothing less than stunning. Imagine a coffee that takes the most compelling and attractive characteristics from multiple growing regions and combines them to create a complete, harmonious, and thoroughly delicious culinary masterpiece. This is what we mean when we talk about “immortality.”

Our Salvadoran coffees come from four different estates spread across the most famous growing regions in the country:

• Finca Malacara – Guillermo Alvarez, located in Santa Ana
  
• Finca El Cerro – Eduardo Alvarez, located in Santa Ana
  
• Finca Bosque Lya – Jose Molina and family, located in Santa Ana
  
• Finca Matalapa – Vicky Dalton-Diaz, located in La Libertad
  
  

The individual farms have experienced incredible success in national quality competitions and together they have taken 1st, 2nd, 5th, 10th and 13th place in recent Cup of Excellence events. All of them have demonstrated an impressive commitment to sustainable practices on their individual farms.

Another thing that sets Los Inmortales apart from most of our Latin American coffees is the prevalence of the Bourbon varietal. It was the first variety planted in the Americas (brought to Martinique in the 1720’s by a French sailor) and remains one of the best to this day. Of all the American coffees, El Salvador now has the biggest prevalence of this variety in production. It is a more fragile tree than many of the newer hybrids, and it has a relatively low productivity, which is why it has been replaced in many other countries. Known for exceptional sweetness and complex fruit characteristics, bourbon has a nobility that is hard to match.

Purchase this coffee in our store here.