El Salvador is a country enjoying a coffee renaissance. The civil war has been over for nearly three decades and subsequent decades of violence have begun to wane. Leaf rust is ever present, but renovation strategies have curbed the crisis. There are simply no limits to the ways this generation of El Salvadoran producers has embraced the specialty coffee market with the duality of tradition and innovation. This is exactly the way Joaquin Palomo is managing Loma La Gloria a 197-acre estate located in El Boquerón on the Quezaltepec Volcano. Processing Details Loma Gloria has a stick protocol for the harvesting of cherries. During the harvest a great deal of care and focus is dedicated to picking the best quality of cherries based on brix measurements. The harvest is so precise that every lot can be traced to a specific section of the estate. After harvesting, cherries are carefully sorted and floated to remove damaged cherries. This particular post-harvest process starts with depulping the sorted cherries and taking the seed covered in mucilage to a patio where it is macerated under a plastic cover, which creates the black coloring on the mucilage covered parchment. Then it is dried in two stages, first on patios for a few days and then moved to raised beds raised beds and dried over a period that ranges from 15 to 20 days to gently reduce the moisture to 11 percent. At the base of the estate, La Gloria has a fully equipped mill called Loma La Gloria. Using recycled water, the harvested cherries are floated to extract damaged and less dense beans, but because access to water is so limited, all of the coffee is processed either as a honey or a natural and then expertly dried on clay patios and raised beds. Loma la Gloria has a cupping lab where every lot is tasted before milling, which also takes place at Loma La Gloria.
