Marsellesa coffee tree full of ripe red cherry, up close on the farm.

Grown by one of us. Roasted by the other.

One coffee, from Miguel's farm in El Salvador, roasted by Joanna.

Valle de Oro Natural

A natural, but a clean one. Chocolate first, then orange behind it, and almost none of the funk the process is known for.

El Salvador · Natural · 1,050 masl · Marsellesa · 250g

Acidity

Body

Sweetness

It is the only coffee we sell, so this is the whole menu.

See the whole coffee

Two of us, and that is the whole company.

Miguel

Miguel grew up around the farm in El Salvador and owns it. The agronomy is not his: Don Julio of Lean Coffee Management runs the agronomy, and has for years. Everything else that happens before the coffee leaves the country is Miguel's.

Joanna

Joanna is Polish, an engineer before she was a roaster, with years at Ikawa behind her. She measures a roast and writes it down so she can do it again on purpose. How the coffee tastes once it is in the drum is hers.

In 2007 the farm tore out every tree and started again.

The farm from above. Long rows of coffee run in diagonals toward a wall of forest, some rows dark and full, others cut low and pale after pruning, with a service road crossing the block.

Pacas and Pacamaras out, Marsellesa in, all twenty-one cultivated hectares of it. Specialty did not respect the variety then. But rust and a changing climate were already visible from where we stood, and at 1,050 metres this close to the equator the old trees were not going to hold. The seed came direct from ECOM CRIAD in Nicaragua, and then more than a decade of in-house selection, keeping only what cupped and yielded. The industry came around years later.

The farm is in San José de la Majada, Sonsonate. Flat, volcanic Andisol, forty per cent shade to sixty per cent sun, no herbicides and no pesticides.

It gets checked more as the dry closes in.

The cherries dry whole. At the start they are just turned for an even dry, three times a day, with no numbers yet. As the dry closes in, that becomes an hourly check on the coffee's own temperature, plus three humidity readings a day. Dull work, and the only reason we can make this taste the same again next year.

What did you get in the cup?

There is a small square printed on the back of the bag, and it brings you here. Tell us what you found, in whatever words you have. We read every one of them, and when this lot comes round again your words are part of what we are aiming at.

Tell us what you tastemestizo.coffee/notes

two heritages, one bean

One coffee. Valle de Oro Natural, 250g. There is no shop here yet, so ask us for a bag and we will sort it out like people.

Ask us for a bag See the coffee