The Los Pirineos farm has been in the Baraona family for 135 years.The family ran the coffee farms for generations, and they were a fairly steady source of income until the brutal Salvadoran Civil war forced the family to leave their land for 12 years between 1980 and 1992. Gilberto Baraona was the only cousin that returned to the farms in 1992, against the wishes of his grandparents, who wanted their descendants to avoid the hardship they had been through. Gilberto sought to rebuild and refocus efforts on the farm. Since Gilberto’s tragic death last year due to Covid-19, the company has been run by his children, Diego and Fabiola. The family’s farms are all located between 1200 and 1550 masl on the Tecapa volcano, just outside the town of Berlin in the Usulutan region of south-eastern El Salvador. This lot of Pacamara is part of the experimentation that has made Pirineos a household name within the coffee industry. Before this year’s harvest the number of raised beds at the Tecapa mill was increased from 600 to 1000, in order to give extra capacity for separation of experiments during peak harvest. This lot was processed using a carbonic maceration process. The cherries are first picked very ripe at a dark red colour, on the edge of overripe. This means there are many sugars in the coffee to feed the long fermentation. These cherries are then floated and cleaned thoroughly, making sure that low density cherries are removed from the final lot. The cherries are then transferred into a plastic tank and sealed carefully. The tanks are placed in a temperature controlled container, kept at 15°C in order to control the pace of the fermentation. As the fermentation starts, CO2 is created in the tank, pushing oxygen out and creating an anaerobic environment. After approximately 72 hours of fermentation, the cherry skin contact and anaerobic fermentation have led to a great deal of complexity in the cup, and a distinctive mouthfeel.