Saxbys in El Salvador, Part 1
This January, Saxbys team members Richard Rollier and Lauren Stevis joined coffee roasters Dillanos on a coffee origin trip to El Salvador. In the following two-part blog series, our Training Manager Lauren shares her experience.
We arrived in El Salvador in darkness and were immediately greeted by smiling locals. We had just left a wintery Philadelphia, and it was a much warmer night than we were used to. Richard, the Dillanos team and Ipacked ourselves into a large van that took us on the 45 minute ride to our beautiful Marriot Hotel tucked away in the suburbs of San Salvador. Exhausted from a long day of traveling, we chose the closest restaurant to our hotel for dinner, tossed back a few shots of tequila in celebration of Richard’s birthday and fell asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow.
I woke up at sunrise in a frenzy of anticipation to see El Salvador in sunlight. I skipped the elevator and ran downstairs. I was immediately enveloped in warmth and the beautiful brightness of tropical sunshine. After filling our bellies with a traditional Salvadorian dish called pupusa (and coffee, of course) we boarded the tour bus for Day 1 of our Origin Trip. Reeling with excitement, I couldn’t help but photograph everything in my path: lush green mountains, exotic trees, and clear blue skies.
Day 1: Café Pacas. Richard and I anxiously took our seats in the tour bus for our first day of exploration with the Dillanos crew and our host, Emilio. Day 1 was dedicated to visiting the iconic Salvadorian coffee mill of Café Pacas, hosted by the founder’s daughter, Maria Pacas Martinez. The Pacas family has been exporting specialty coffee from El Salvador for almost five generations. On our way to the Pacas mill, Emilio debriefed us on the history of coffee in El Slavador as well as the negative effects both La Roya, a plant fungus, and the country’s political instability has had on this valuable export.
The moment we entered the enormous and heavily protected gates of the Café Pacas coffee mill, I knew my life as a barista trainer, avid coffee drinker and Saxbys brand ambassador was about to change forever.
The closest thing I can compare this experience to is walking into Willy Wonka’s factory and seeing the magic that goes into the production. Upon entering the heavily gated Café Pacas mill, we were surrounded by an intricately structured coffee nursery that yielded everything from 10 day old coffee sprouts to plants with six month’s growth. The growing coffee plants were just as beautiful as I had imagined. I took hundreds of photographs, and then we slowly sauntered down the trail, careful to take in every bit of coffee-growing glory, toward the manufacturing mill where freshly picked coffee cherries were being processed.
On the other side of this mill, we found a site so beautiful and so majestic that we walked wide-eyed and silent towards the expansive patio where upwards to 50 batches of differing coffee varieties were laid out to dry in a patchwork of rectangles. It was truly breathtaking. A stunning tapestry of green coffee beans, which lay peacefully on a bright white patio framed by the tropical green horizon and the perfectly blue sky.
In that moment, every ounce of passion I had exerted over my two years training Saxbys team members came rushing back to me, reinvigorating me and reassuring me that all of the words spoken, relationships formed and energy expended in my coffee career were real and true. The amount of gratitude I felt in that moment brought me to tears.
We walked onto the patio and wove throughout the different varietals, learning about the different ways each batch of coffee is processed. Around us, workers were diligently raking the green coffee beans and making sure that each individual bean was exposed to the sun, which allows them all to dry evenly. After a thorough tour of her mill, Maria took us to her office where she explained the history of her farm and the development of her own Pacas varietal of coffee. She spoke to us about the mission and inspiration behind Café Pacas: “to love coffee like a member of our family.”
After an incredibly inspirational morning, Emilio made sure that we made a pit-stop at El Salvador’s highest volcano (which is also among its most active): Santa Ana. The broad summit of Santa Ana has a beautiful array of concentric craters with crescent-shaped rims. We stopped to observe the volcano’s solidified volcanic lava and enjoyed lunch halfway down the mountain at La Pampa el Volcon. Delicious grilled food and a few beverages made it the perfect ending to a perfect day.