Sunset — The Signature Chapter

$50.00

Sunset — The Signature Chapter

Name: Sunset — The Signature Chapter
Brand: Floranza USA
Price: 50.00 USD
Availability: InStock

100% Bourbon (arabica) · Apaneca, El Salvador

For the hour when the day begins to exhale.

★★★★★ (3)

A single-varietal Bourbon from our family's land in the volcanic highlands of Apaneca, honey- processed and taken to a medium-dark roast. Dark chocolate and cacao up front, citrus and delicate florals underneath, finishing velvety and long.

Origin: Apaneca, El Salvador
Elevation: 1,200 MASL
Process: Honey
Tasting notes: Golden caramel & mandarin citrus
Weight: 397 g

$50.00 Ships within the U.S. only, packed by our team in Miami and Washington, D.C

Shipping: $10 flat within the U.S. · Free over $149.99 · Ships from Miami, FL and Washington, D.C

The details

Origin Apaneca·El Salvador

Altitude 1,200 MASL

Varietal 100% Bourbon

Process Honey

Roast Medium-Dark

Tasting Notes Dark Chocolate·Cacao·Citrus·Floral

Profile Rich·Smooth·Medium-Bodied

Pair With Dark chocolate tart ·Tiramisu·Salted caramel brownie

Inspired by: First Light, Morning Dew, Open Sky, Wild Bloom

Reveals notes: Caramel Warmth, Velvet Cacao, Whispers of Citrus

The terroir

The same Apaneca volcanic slopes as Aluna, 330 feet (100 m) lower, and the trade-off is real. Less altitude means faster ripening and less acidity. What remains is the deep volcanic Andisol and the mist coming off the range, which give the cup weight and a mineral depth. Lower-grown Bourbon is where the chocolate register comes from.

The variety

Bourbon is a natural mutation of Typica, the oldest cultivated arabica, that arose on Île Bourbon, now Réunion, and reached El Salvador in the 1800s, where it became the backbone of the national crop. It is tall and low-yielding beside the compact modern cultivars that displaced it across much of Central America. Growers keep it for one reason: no other variety carries sugar this cleanly into the cup.

In the cup

Honey-processed like Aluna, then taken further into the roast. Medium-dark pushes the Maillard reaction past caramel into cocoa, which is why the notes read as dark chocolate and cacao rather than nuts. Beneath that, the Bourbon's own citrus and floral character survives the heat, and the body closes velvety and long.

The signature expression of Floranza.

Radiant, sensual, quietly unforgettable.

Regenerative farming

On the slope

The native shade canopy stays standing. Cover crops hold the ground between rows, coffee pulp is composted and returned to the plot, tillage is kept to a minimum, and bare soil is never left exposed through the rains.

In the soil

Organic matter rises, and with it the soil's capacity to hold water and exchange nutrients. Living roots and fungal networks stay intact, which matters on volcanic Andisols, where much of the phosphorus is bound up in the clay and needs soil biology to release it.

In the tree

Deeper, better-colonized root systems reach moisture through the dry months. Shade lowers leaf temperature and buffers heat stress, so the tree is not pushed into the boom-and-bust cycles that exhaust it. Healthier trees stay productive for far longer.

In the cup

Shade slows ripening by weeks. A cherry that matures slowly lays down more sugar and more aromatic precursors before it is picked, and it ripens more evenly along the branch, which is what makes selective hand-picking worth the labor.

Family micro-lots

Aluna, Dawn and Sunset are micro-lots, grown and kept separate by our own family on our own land. Volume programs are a separate tier — see Partners.

What a micro-lot is

A micro-lot is a batch harvested, processed, dried and roasted entirely on its own, often from a single plot or a single section of one farm. It never joins a blending tank with anyone else's coffee. That is why it can be traced back to one family and one slope rather than to a country.

Who grows it

We do. Floranza coffee is grown on our family's own land in Apaneca and Chalatenango, on holdings of about a hectare and a half — the scale typical to these ranges. The same family has worked these plots from one generation to the next, since coffee reached the region in the 1880s.

Why it costs more

Our slopes are too steep to mechanize, so we pick every cherry by hand, returning to the same trees repeatedly because a branch ripens unevenly over several weeks. Keeping each lot separate also costs us the volume premium we would earn by pooling the harvest.

What it buys you

Traceability that holds up to questions, and a cup that shifts a little from year to year because it is one slope's harvest rather than a regional average. Because we farm it ourselves, nothing passes through a collection point or a broker between the plot and the roaster: the people who pick the cherry are the people whose name is on the bag.

How we process the coffee at our farm

Growing, milling, drying, roasting and packing all happen on the mountain. Only the finished coffee travels.

Picking

We pick by hand and take only ripe cherry, returning to the same trees over several weeks because a branch never ripens all at once. Nothing is stripped.

Pulped the same day

Cherry goes to the mill the day it is picked. The skin comes off and the sticky mucilage stays on the seed: fully for our honey lots, partly for the semi-washed.

Dried slowly

The coffee dries on raised beds, turned by hand through the day so it dries evenly down to a stable moisture level. Rushing this stage is what flattens a cup.

Rested in parchment

The lot rests in its parchment husk, which protects the bean in storage. We hull close to the roast date rather than months ahead.

Selected by hand

Every bean passes the sorting table. Broken beans, insect damage, black and sour beans and quakers — the immature seeds that never caramelize — are pulled out one by one, then the lot is graded for size.

Roasted and packed

Only the selected beans reach the roaster, in small batches, on a profile built for that lot rather than a house curve. Packed immediately after roasting, at origin.