The extended Belismelis-Alvarez family manages 15 separate estates in El Salvador, totaling almost 900 hectares. Descending from Spanish settlers who arrived in the mid-1800s, the current generation is the sixth to be involved in coffee farm management. For these large volume naturals from their La Esperanza farm the family has partnered with Los Volcanes Coffee, who processes the farm’s cherry in Ahuachapán and oversees the blending of day lots throughout harvest to maintain a fruit-forward but balanced and chocolatey cup profile. With such a combination of origin, processing profile, low cost of production and annual volume, La Esperanza’s naturals are practically one of a kind in Central America.
The Belismelis-Alvarez family
Like many European arrivals in the 19th century, Don Emilio Belismelis settled in the department of Santa Ana and adopted coffee production as a vocation and passion. From the 1880s until the 1930s, El Salvador’s coffee sector boomed. Coffee at times was the country’s sole export, a source of great wealth (and a large portion of US coffee consumption), thanks to El Salvador’s early liberalist embrace of the crop and its widespread investment in export infrastructure. Families like Don Emilio’s grew their holdings greatly during this time, and many subsequent generations were born into land-based wealth and influence.
Today El Salvador’s coffee sector is far more modest than it was at its peak 100 years ago, and families like the Belismelis-Alvarez family need to be intensely involved in farm renovations and ecological diversity to maintain their land. Finca La Esperanza is uniquely positioned for longevity, being on the lower slopes of the San Salvador volcano and spanning the border of El Boqueron National Park, affording the farm ample soil nutrition and canopy. While coffee leaf rust outbreaks have devastated the bourbon populations throughout El Salvador, La Esperanza has kept most of its original cultivars healthy and productive through integrated farming, fertilizing, and renovation practices.
Los Volcanes Coffee and Processing
Los Volcanes is a tight-knit processing and exporting team based in Antigua, Guatemala. Their expertise in agronomy and processing has gained them farming clients throughout Guatemala, El Salvador, and Brazil, thanks to their many years of experience as cuppers, roasters, exporters, relationship managers, and educators. Indeed, the name “Los Volcanes” appears on a wide variety of coffees Royal imports each year.
The founding team at Los Volcanes is known for breaking down a single farm’s harvest into hundreds of data points (compost formulas, genetics, shade variance, picking rates, fermentation times and temperatures, drying styles, and on and on) and re-building custom harvesting protocols for farm managers based on their experience and cupping acumen.
Naturally, over time, Los Volcanes began to co-manage farms with their supplier partners.
Los Volcanes’ El Salvador operation is based out of the San Miguel mill, in Ahuachapán. La Esperanza’s daily cherry pickings are transported here to sun-dry on the mill’s patios. Each individual day lot is cupped in the Antigua lab. Over the course of the harvest profiles are established, and larger lots are compiled for export.
