NOMAD – Pacamara 250g | El Salvador

About This Coffee

Finca Las Brisas sits above Juayúa, in El Salvador's Apaneca-Ilamatepec mountain range, and it's become a working example of what technology and careful farming can do for coffee. Where many Salvadoran producers have struggled with climate change and leaf rust, Carlos Pola has held a healthy plantation together with rising quality and rising yields.

Carlos is the fifth generation of a farming family, but he came to coffee by a different route — twenty years in the textile industry before he committed to it fully in 2012, convinced the specialty world was opening up real opportunities. He now runs Las Brisas alongside two other family farms, and he's poured the discipline of his old trade into them: quality control, data, and a steady investment in technology and sustainability.

Some of that thinking is genuinely forward-looking. He uses mycorrhizal fungi, which form a symbiotic relationship with the coffee trees and improve how they take up nutrients and hold water — enough to keep the trees healthy through drought. When rust hit the region hard in 2012–13, he renovated most of the farm with disease-resistant varieties, holding back only a small share of Bourbon. Today Las Brisas grows a mix that includes Pacamara, Pacas and others, balancing cup quality against resilience. He's also brought in contour planting to conserve water and prevent erosion, and a QR-based system that traces coffee from farm to cup, all of which leaves him room to keep experimenting with new processing.

This is NOMAD's fourth consecutive year working with Carlos and his team, and the first on fully direct trade — a closer relationship that tightens both quality and traceability.

The processing here is detailed. Cherries are floated for selection, then fermented in barrels under anaerobic conditions for five days. They're pulped without water and handled semi-washed — a brief rinse of a couple of minutes — before drying on raised beds, two days in the sun to start and then moved into the shade.

In the cup it's sweet and juicy, led by persimmon, orange blossom honey and dulce de leche. As it cools, lighter notes come through: 70% chocolate, sponge cake, a touch of nectarine and caramelised nuts. The body is creamy, the acidity juicy.

Freshly roasted by NOMAD Coffee in Barcelona and imported to the UK by ROAST EDIT Co.