Don Hilario Estate Coffee

Don Hilario Estate:

Why is Don Hilario so special?

The answer actually is over 200 years old. Back in 1796, this very special variety of the Arabica bean, called Bourbon, first made its presence in the rich, volcanic mountains of the Santa Ana region of western El Salvador. Over 120 years ago, Don Hilario Menendez began harvesting this prized single-bean coffee, which became the exclusive botanical variety of coffee tree growing on the Don Hilario Estate.

Today the tradition of Don Hilario's labor of love continues through his grandson, Gerardo Menendez. At altitudes over 4,000 feet above sea level, the required altitude for Strictly High Grown coffee classification, the younger Menendez continues his grandfather's practice of hand-picking his estate coffee on the family plantation.

Pure Tradition

Don Hilario Estate Coffee selects the best cherries and keeps them pure and unblended for you, our consumer. In addition, they are washed in spring water...sun dried outdoors on clay patios...and have all the defective, broken or otherwise imperfect beans removed. All of these time honored procedures result in one of the most highly rated coffee beans in the world, exceeding the prestigious European Preparation Standard.

Keeping this coffee pure and unblended from other coffees is our sole purpose in bringing an estate coffee to our customers. Just as an "estate wine" is produced from grapes grown on a single wine vineyard, so are estate coffees grown and harvested on a single coffee plantation, or estate. At Don Hilario, we recognize that different people have different tastes, and as such, we offer three different Roasts of our estate coffee: American Roast, European Roast, and Espresso Roast. So now you can choose which flavor profile suits your own individual taste.