El Salvador Manzano Natural – Topeca Coffee Roasters

I have had the opportunity to try a few naturally processed El Salvador coffees recently and was incredibly impressed with their quality and depth of flavor. For that reason, when I saw this coffee from Topeca come up in Crema.co, I knew I had to give it a try.

The coffee begins with a sweet, but slightly sharp fragrance full of berries and almond. The flavor was a knock-out combination of strawberry and blackberry with a juicy sweetness setting the foundation. There was a depth to the flavor that is hard to explain, but is easy to notice after trying thousands of coffees through the years. It has a good acidity that is strong, but not overpowering. The coffee had a medium to full body that was silky, smooth and almost syrupy. It was deeply sweet, well-balanced and had a tart, quick finish. Given the complexity and layering of flavors, I loved exploring this coffee in a variety of brew methods. While it shined most as pour over, it presented itself very well for espresso where its fruit forward attributes really shone. I also had a chance to try it in Japanese iced coffee which was a perfect way to drink it cold because it preserved the aromatics and depth of flavor found in the pour over method.

The Bottom Line

Emilio Lopez Diaz (the producer of this coffee) is a 6th generation coffee producer, so he knows a thing or two about growing and producing great coffee. That knowledge and care for the coffee shines through in this delicious and complex coffee. It gets added to the growing list of amazing El Salvador coffees I’ve tried recently. If you enjoy a sweet, juicy and fruit-forward coffee, I’d absolutely recommend this coffee specifically and more broadly any naturally processed El Salvadorian coffee.