Finca El Cerro, or The Hill Farm, in El Salvador’s coffee-growing zone Apaneca, Ahuachapan, has been stewarded by five generations in Fernando Leto Escobar’s ancestral line.
In 2016, Fernando, who had studied for a different career at university and had been working in a distant industry, decided to take on the leadership role at the farm from his father, the elder Don Fernando to embrace a way of life that he felt to be instinctively aligned with his values.
Since taking over, Fernando has been focused on raising the quality and value of the farms’ yields, not only as a matter of sustaining livelihoods — theirs and the community of coffee workers that depend on Finca El Cerro for regular and seasonal employment — but also as a matter of filial and civic duty while pursuing his passion for coffee.
That is, to continue his family's stake in propping up El Salvador's heritage coffee industry, whose historical prominence has been hampered by structural constraints and environmental challenges at least in the last three decades.
To help prompt a resurgence of his homeland’s stature as a recognized fine coffee exporter, Fernando, through Finca El Cerro, produces exceptional micro-lots comprised of exotic varieties — including those recognized as native to the country, like the Pacamara, alongside the foreign, like the Geisha — that are eco-consciously cultivated, selectively handpicked, and tactfully processed to achieve cup profiles that coffee lovers find irresistible and can only identify with El Salvador.
Finca El Cerro’s higher-end specialty coffees are recognized and rewarded by specialty coffee communities across Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, China, and South Korea, with the recent addition of the UAE, as a result of Fernando’s persistent outreach to Fernando similarly motivated roasters who share his values.
As a small-medium sized farm themselves, Finca El Cerro’s contribution to uplifting their fellow coffee producers, irrespective of scale, is through proactive knowledge-sharing and hosting visits to the farm and their processing facility.
From Fernando’s standpoint, extending this generosity is merely an expression of gratitude and a means of giving back for the opportunities to learn and travel afforded to him by the seasoned producers who openly made their expertise and resources accessible to him.
At the same time, fully appreciating that the exceptional coffees Finca El Cerro is increasingly becoming known for would not be possible without the time, labor, and well-being of their community of workers, they have initiated a healthcare program for full-time employees at the farm and the mill, in collaboration with one of their partner importers, intending to expand its scope as the enterprise grows.
