Nelson Flores - El Salvador

La Mercedes, the farm owned and operated by Nelson Flores and his wife Ana Elsy Murcia, is surrounded by dense pine forest in the clouds. Nelson has been involved in coffee for the last 15 years - the first 8 helping his mother - Blanca Marina Reyna, a very well know producer in the area - with her farm and now the last 7 running a farm of his own. While this coffee is technically considered a washed coffee it actually goes through 2 forms of fermentation. Once the ripe coffee cherries are picked they are stored in sacks for up to 15 hours (initial fermentation) while they await transport by horse to take them a few more kilometers down the hill to where the sacks will be loaded onto trucks and taken to the mill where they are pulped and then fermented a further 24 hours. After this the coffee is washed and then dried on raised bed for an average of 15 days.