Finca Malacara A

Finca Malacara A is a beautiful farm close to the Santa Ana volcano in the north-west of El Salvador. We have been buying coffee from José Guillermo Alvarez Prunera and María Alvarez De Murray for many years now and we particularly enjoy its consistent flavour profile of restrained citrus and caramelised notes. In El Salvador, coffee has one crop per year, and like most farms Malacara A will produce other products to help maintain income out of the coffee season, these include roasting their own coffee, coffee seeds and seedlings, avocado, and jocote. The coffee seeds and individual seedlings come from the farm’s stock, which is collected and propagated for their own use as well as sale. The roasted coffee is sold to restaurants, cafes and hotels in El Salvador. There are two harvests of avocado a year and it is usually sold at the farm gate for the local markets. Avocado can be a difficult crop to store and transport; when it is picked ripe it bruises easily and at lower altitude (in comparison to the farm) will over-ripen quickly. Jocote is an interesting fruit native to Central and South America. It sold in unripe, and ripe form. When it is ripe, there is no other fruit like it, the pulpy flesh has a flavour somewhere between plum and mango, when it isn’t ripe it is eaten with salt or fermented. The jocote tree is multi-purpose, along with the fruit crop, it is also used as shade for the coffee.