El Salvador Mapache Sampacho Natural Santa Erlinda

Mapache Coffee is a fifth-generation company of coffee producers, owned and managed by Jan-Carlo and Sofia Handtke in the Apaneca Ilamatepec mountain range of El Salvador. Mapache Coffee employs over 125 locals year-round, but during harvest season, their staff swells to 600 people who work together to build coffee nurseries, replant at Mapache’s six farm properties, and process the perfectly ripe cherries that come from them.

Mapache maintains a strong commitment to the well-being of the coffee forests, ensuring that every farm has a canopy protecting the coffee plants and soil. Their modern wet mill uses limited amounts of water during the washing process, then recycles and reuses that water in the same process. All the remaining pulp from the wet milling process is incorporated back into the farms as compost, returning key nutrients to the soil.

Mapache’s Strictly High Grown coffees come from the two Finca El Naranjito properties and Finca Casa de Zinc, three of the company’s six estates. These neighboring farms are located in Concepción de Ataco in the municipality of Ahuachapán. Bourbon and Pacas varieties make up the majority of the crops here, with these three properties accounting for 60 percent of Mapache’s total coffee growing area.

Santa Erlinda is a small farm located in the town of Salcoatitán, Sonsonate. Santa Erlinda receives more than 3000 mm of rain a year, making it a very fertile land for growing coffee. The Sampacho cultivar is nestled among cedar trees and surrounded by Copalchi windbreakers.

Santa Erlinda goes back three generations. It is a small but very productive farm that was replanted in 2014 after the coffee rust breakout of 2012 wiped out the entire farm. The property is now taken care of 5 young farmers who work yearlong doing every task needed to produce great coffee. When the harvest is ready, the families that live nearby come to carefully select the cherries that are then processed in Beneficio Recreo.