How is El Salvador Finca Las Ninfas Coffee? A Brief Introduction to Pacamara Coffee Variety Characteristics

FrontStreet Coffee - El Salvador Finca Las Ninfas Pacamara Natural

This naturally processed Pacamara from Finca Las Ninfas is exceptional both for its processing and for the variety behind it. The cup is soft on the palate, layered with green grape, plum, and peach fruit, lifted by lovely hibiscus notes and subtle herbal hints, all carried on a syrupy body that stays remarkably clean.

Family Legacy

Ricardo Valdivieso is a fourth-generation coffee grower who, together with his family, has produced outstanding coffees for many years — including this wild natural Pacamara. Like the family's other farm, Santa Leticia, Finca Las Ninfas is filled with coffee trees of exceptional quality in a beautiful setting.

The farms trace back to Francisco Menendez Valdivieso, a legendary figure who served as a general and interim president and founded El Salvador's education system. Ricardo is his great-grandson. Beyond coffee and untouched forest, the farms hold Mayan-era archaeological sites, and Ricardo's daughter Monica runs an ecotourism lodge at Santa Leticia.

Terroir and Location

The farms sit near the town of Apaneca, east of the Volcan de Santa Ana (also called Ilamatepec), in El Salvador's principal coffee-growing region. The mountain range running across the area is the country's highest active volcano zone, offering near-ideal coffee conditions: volcanic soil, steady Pacific breezes, sufficient altitude, and distinct wet and dry seasons that keep the soil fertile and the primeval forest abundant.

Coffee Details

Variety: Pacamara

Altitude: 1500m

Processing: Natural

Flavor Notes: Grape, Plum, Peach

About FrontStreet Coffee

FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research shop dedicated to sharing coffee knowledge. We share openly because we want more people to fall in love with coffee — and we would love to help you find your next favorite cup. That has been our mission for the past six years.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Love the juicy, fruit-forward character of naturals? FrontStreet Coffee's Natural "Red Cherry Project" Yirgacheffe deserves a place on your shelf. Only fully ripe, all-red cherries are selected, then spread on raised drying beds — kept off the ground so the fruit stays clear of insects, dust, and mold — and turned regularly for even drying, with defective beans picked out by hand in repeated rounds. After medium-light roasting it shows elegant florals and bright acidity plus distinct tropical fruit, a full fermented sweetness, and a honeyed body.

Another natural to try is FrontStreet Coffee's Guji Hambella "Huakui" from Sidamo. The 200-hectare farm dries whole cherries on raised beds for 21 days, raking them constantly for even drying and hand-removing any moldy or defective fruit every three to five days before the dried husk is milled off. Roasted medium-light, it pours out faint fermented wine aroma, florals, citrus, and mango, with honey sweetness, cocoa and a touch of spice, a thick body, and a long finish.