Three pickers carrying sacks of freshly harvested coffee beneath a giant shade tree

Est. 1872 · Quezaltepeque, El Salvador

Coffee the way this
land intended.

Finca Colombia is a working family estate on the slopes of the San Salvador volcano, where every cherry has been picked by hand, sorted in the field, and carried out the same way for more than 150 years.

Discover our coffee Our story

Shade grown. Hand picked. Since 1872. A physician from Medellín planted coffee on these slopes and named the farm after the country he left behind. One volcanic eruption and a century and a half later, the same land is still in coffee, and the harvest still moves by hand.

1872 Founded
70 Manzanas under shade
1,000 Metres above sea level
100% Hand picked
Two people picking coffee cherries side by side among the trees A woven basket filled with freshly picked coffee cherries

Our Story

Two countries,
one farm

Finca Colombia sits in Quezaltepeque, La Libertad, on the northern slopes of the San Salvador volcano, where the coffee grows at 1,000 metres above the sea, climbing toward the crater of El Boquerón. The farm was founded within the coffee lands assembled by Dr. Emilio Álvarez Lalinde, a physician from Medellín who arrived in El Salvador in 1872 and is remembered as the father of Salvadoran surgery.

Homesick for Antioquia, the family wrote their old country across the new landscape: farms named Colombia, Antioquía, Bolívar and Miranda, and a river renamed Río Claro because it reminded them of Manizales. This farm keeps the name, and the family keeps the farm: seventy manzanas, about 49 hectares, in sixteen tablones, still part of the wider Álvarez lands and still worked alongside their descendants.

Walk through 150 years

Since 1872

A century and a half
on the same slopes

  1. 1872

    A doctor plants a farm

    Dr. Emilio Álvarez Lalinde, a young physician from Medellín, lands in El Salvador. Within two decades he assembles more than 2,000 hectares of coffee land in Quezaltepeque, among them a farm he names Colombia, after the country he left behind.

  2. 1889

    The family follows

    His brother Rafael arrives from Manizales after a month of travel by cart, river and sea, and takes over the running of Colombia and Santa Isabel. That August his daughter María is born at the finca.

  3. 1893

    Washed coffee is born here

    The brothers install El Salvador's first water-powered coffee depulper, pioneering wet processing in the country. Within a few years, machines wash, dry and pack coffee for export across the family's farms.

  4. 1917

    The volcano speaks

    On the night of Corpus Christi, the San Salvador volcano erupts. Earthquakes level houses in Quezaltepeque and lava freezes into the rock fields of El Playón, minutes from the farm gates. The finca endures.

  5. 1926

    A daughter makes history

    María Álvarez de Guillén, born on this farm, publishes La Hija de Casa, the first novel published by a woman in El Salvador. A suffragist and founding member of the Inter-American Commission of Women, she keeps working in coffee all her life and later publishes a book of poems called El pregón del café.

  6. Today

    The work continues

    The same land is still in coffee. New seedlings go into the ground every year, the soil is studied plot by plot, and each harvest still moves by hand through the farm's sixteen tablones.

Coffee bushes growing beneath tall native shade trees

Under the canopy

Grown in the shade of native trees

Our coffee ripens slowly beneath a living canopy that shelters birds, builds soil, and deepens the cup. Some of these shade trees have stood over the tablones longer than anyone can remember.

The Coffee

From blossom to bean

Every lot follows the same slow road: white blossoms in the dry season, deep red cherries at harvest, and dense green beans ready for the roaster.

White coffee blossoms along a branch

The blossom

After the first rains, white blossoms open along every branch and perfume the tablones for a few short days. Each flower is one future cherry.

A coffee branch heavy with ripe red cherries

The cherry

Pacas, Catimor and Icatú cherries ripen slowly in the shade, and slow is the point: more time on the branch means more sweetness in the cup. Pickers pass the same tree several times, taking only what is deep red.

A hand holding green coffee beans beside a cup of roasted beans

The bean

Dense green beans, grown in old volcanic soil at a slow highland pace. From here they go to the mill, the roaster, and finally the cup.

The Harvest

Four hands at a time

No machines touch this hillside. The harvest runs from November to March, peaking in January and February, and it moves at the speed of careful hands: from tree to basket to scale to town.

  1. A picker reaching into a coffee tree, basket of cherries at her waist
    01

    Pick

    Only the ripe cherries come off the branch. Pickers pass the same tree again and again as the rest ripen.

  2. Sorting freshly picked coffee cherries in a woven basket
    02

    Sort

    Leaves, stems and underripe fruit are pulled out in the field, so only clean cherry rides to the mill.

  3. Weighing sacks of coffee and recording the harvest by hand
    03

    Weigh

    Every picker's harvest is weighed and recorded in the notebook, the old way, sack by sack.

  4. A truck bed stacked with full sacks of coffee cherries
    04

    Carry

    Sacks ride out the same afternoon so the fruit arrives fresh at the mill.

515 qq Green coffee (oro) this harvest
23,400 kg 51,500 pounds of export coffee
2,575 qq Ripe cherry picked to get there
116,800 kg 257,500 pounds through hands and baskets

A quintal is 100 pounds. It takes about five pounds of ripe cherry to make one pound of export-ready green coffee, and every one of those pounds was picked by hand.

A basket brimming with red and crimson coffee cherries seen from above

The reward

One basket at a time

A hand holding a ripe yellow cacao pod against the trunk of a cacao tree

Beyond Coffee

A farm, not a monoculture

Cacao, plantain, citrus and hardwood share these hills with the coffee, the way Salvadoran farms looked long before monoculture. The mix feeds the families who work here, shelters the soil, and keeps the land alive between harvests.

Caring for old trees means planting new ones. Every year, young coffee goes into the ground and the soil of each tablón is studied and fed, so the next 150 years get the same chance the first 150 had.

The Renewal

New roots in old soil

A farm that has lasted 150 years plants for the next 150. Season by season, young trees go into the tablones alongside the established Pacas, Catimor and Icatú.

A truck bed filled with young coffee seedlings arriving at the farm
A worker kneeling to plant a coffee seedling A freshly planted coffee seedling in dark volcanic soil

In the tablones today

  • PacasA natural Bourbon mutation discovered in El Salvador
  • CatimorHardy and rust-resistant, a workhorse of the tablones
  • IcatúA tall Brazilian hybrid, productive and full in the cup

Recently planted

  • BatianTall, rust-resistant, bred in Kenya
  • Catimor ColombiaHardy and productive, a fitting name for this farm
  • AraraA Brazilian variety prized for yield and cup quality
  • Obatá RojoRust-resistant with a soft, sweet profile

Thousands of seedlings arrive by truck and go into the ground by hand, each one set into a basin of turned soil and fed from its first day.

Visit Us

Walk the farm with us

We welcome visitors to the finca in Quezaltepeque, thirty minutes from San Salvador. Walk the tablones under the old shade trees and taste what this land has been growing since 1872. Come between November and March, best of all in January or February, to see the harvest in full swing.

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