El Salvador Diamanté Coffee: A Gem
Diamanté is Spanish for Diamond and in today’s blog you’ll learn exactly why our El Salvador Diamanté coffee is a true gem. With pronounced flavours of citrus brightness, and honeyed sweetness this coffee is a favourite of ours and our customers who keep coming back for more.
You can explore and purchase our award-winning El Salvador Diamanté directly from the Acorns Coffee website here:
👉 Visit Acorns Coffee – El Salvador Diamanté
We’re incredibly proud to share that this our El Salvador coffee received a Great Taste Award, one of the most prestigious and respected accolades in the food and drink industry. Judged by over 500 experts, the award recognises exceptional flavour, quality, and craftsmanship. It’s a significant recognition not only of the excellence of this coffee but of the hard work from farm to roast that makes it so special.
Our version of El Salvador Diamanté has been carefully profiled and roasted in-house to highlight its delicate floral aromatics, crisp citrus acidity, and honeyed sweetness. The judges described it as “elegantly balanced with layers of fruit and a clean, satisfying finish”, praising the clarity of its flavour and the integrity of its expression.
Great Taste Award-Winning & Available at Acorns Coffee
Winning the Great Taste Award is a meaningful moment for us at Acorns. We’ve always believed in sourcing exceptional coffees with full traceability, and Diamanté represents everything we value: a deep connection to origin, careful harvest practices, and a distinctive cup profile that brings joy with every cup, it’s no surprise that it’s one of our top 3 selling coffees!
Whether you’re a seasoned specialty coffee lover or just beginning to explore, this is a coffee that promises to both surprise and satisfy — and we invite you to taste the difference for yourself.
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Origin and Elevation: The Foundation of Flavour
El Salvador is a relatively small country in coffee terms, but what it lacks in size, it more than makes up for in volcanic soil richness, microclimatic variation, and high-altitude topography — all of which are crucial factors in the quality of the cup.
Diamanté is typically grown in the Apaneca-Ilamatepec mountain range, a region renowned for producing some of El Salvador’s finest coffees. Farms in this region lie at altitudes ranging from 1,200 to 1,500 meters above sea level, which plays a significant role in slowing the maturation of the coffee cherries. This slower development allows for greater sugar concentration, resulting in a sweeter, more complex cup.
Volcanic activity has gifted the land with mineral-rich soils, offering nutrients that nourish coffee plants in a balanced, natural way. This soil composition also contributes subtly to the coffee’s structure and mouthfeel, lending a plush, velvety body that provides a canvas for the more delicate flavour notes to shine.
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Climate: A Symphony of Seasons
The climate in this part of El Salvador is characterized by distinct wet and dry seasons, an essential factor in the health of the coffee plants and the quality of the final bean. The rainy season generally spans from May to October, followed by a dry harvest season from November to March.
This seasonal rhythm is key. The rains ensure healthy vegetative growth and adequate water supply during the early stages of cherry development. Then, as the rains subside, the dry season provides ideal conditions for controlled, sun-dried processing — a critical aspect in bringing out the bean’s full flavour potential.
El Salvador’s consistent diurnal temperature variation — warm days and cool nights — creates a stress profile in the coffee plant that intensifies the concentration of acids and sugars. This translates into a vibrant cup profile, typically boasting bright acidity balanced by layered sweetness. It’s in this delicate tension between heat and cool that the best flavors are coaxed from the plant.
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Harvest Practices: Precision and Patience
The El Salvador Diamanté bean is the product of careful handpicking, often done in multiple passes through the coffee trees. Only the ripest, most vividly red cherries are selected during each pass, ensuring that uniformity of ripeness is maintained — a crucial requirement for producing top-tier specialty coffee.
The harvest period, typically from December through February, is treated with almost ceremonial care. Producers involved with Diamanté tend to work with select micro-lots or in small cooperatives, giving them the flexibility and dedication to perform quality-focused harvesting techniques. These often include floating cherry selection (to remove underripes and over-ripes) and immediate post-harvest processing to preserve freshness and prevent fermentation flaws.
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Processing: Where Craft Meets Climate
Diamanté is often processed using washed (fully washed) or honey methods, though some producers experiment with natural processing for limited micro-lots. The washed process is most common and contributes to the cup’s clarity and crisp acidity.
In the washed method, cherries are depulped within hours of picking, and the mucilage is removed via fermentation tanks or mechanical scrubbers. The cool, dry mountain climate allows for slow drying on raised beds or patios, typically taking 10–14 days. This extended drying, while time-consuming, allows for the development of deeper, more articulate flavours.
Honey processing (where some mucilage is left on the bean during drying) adds a different angle — a little more body and sweetness, with the risk of over-fermentation being offset by the cool, predictable dry-season conditions.
In either case, the post-harvest process is adapted closely to the local climate — the dry, breezy afternoons and cool nights are ideal for stable drying, reducing the chances of mold or fermentation defects. The result is a coffee that tastes pure, clean, and expressive of its origin.
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Tasting Notes: A Symphony in the Cup
The El Salvador Diamanté is renowned for its elegance and balance, often showing off a profile that appeals both to specialty coffee aficionados and those newer to the scene. A typical cup offers:
• Aroma: Floral, with notes of jasmine and orange blossom.
• Acidity: Bright but not sharp — often described as citrus-like, with hints of mandarin or lime.
• Sweetness: Honeyed and sugary, often evoking golden syrup, ripe stone fruit, or red apple.
• Body: Medium to silky, with a smooth mouthfeel and clean finish.
• Aftertaste: Lingering with notes of caramel, cocoa nibs, and a gentle nuttiness.
What makes Diamanté particularly special is the balance of these elements. While some coffees scream with acidity or syrupy sweetness, Diamanté speaks with subtlety and grace. It rewards the careful drinker with layered complexity — each sip revealing new facets, much like a diamond catching light at different angles.
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Brewing Recommendations
To best showcase Diamanté’s nuanced profile, manual brew methods like pour-over or AeroPress are highly recommended. A medium grind and water temperature around 93–94°C will help preserve its delicate floral notes and acidity.
Espresso can also be rewarding — look for a 1:2 brew ratio with a slightly longer shot time (around 30–32 seconds) to bring out its inherent sweetness and chocolate undertones. It pairs well with milk, but also sings on its own as a straight shot.
Final Thoughts: A Coffee of Provenance and Poise
El Salvador Diamanté is more than just a premium bean — it is a culmination of place, process, and people. From the nutrient-rich volcanic soils to the high-altitude farms shaded by native trees; from the hands that carefully pick each cherry to the climate that allows for deliberate and delicate drying — everything about this coffee speaks of intentionality.
For coffee roasters and baristas, Diamanté offers a flexible yet character-rich bean, capable of holding its own in both single origin and blend applications. For drinkers, it’s an invitation to experience coffee not just as a beverage, but as a sensory journey into the highlands of El Salvador.
In an industry that increasingly values traceability and terroir, El Salvador Diamanté is a shining example of how microclimate and harvest practices can transform a humble cherry into a world-class cup.
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Locally Roasted in Bordon, Hampshire
What truly brings this extraordinary bean to life is its careful, small-batch roasting right here in Bordon, Hampshire, by Dayne Cartwright — owner of Acorns Coffee, operating out of our micro-roastery at The Shed.
Dayne approaches each roast with an artisan’s eye and a craftsman’s precision. Using a combination of sensory feedback, roast profiling, and an understanding of how El Salvador Diamanté behaves during heat development, he tailors each batch to draw out the floral aromatics, citrus brightness, and honeyed sweetness that make this coffee so distinctive. Every roast is monitored and logged for consistency, ensuring that what you taste in the cup is a true reflection of the bean’s natural potential.
Roasting at The Shed allows us to keep our footprint small and our quality high — directly connecting the community of Bordon to the global story behind each coffee we serve. Whether you’re enjoying it in one of our cafés or brewing it at home, you’re experiencing something truly local: roasted with care just down the road, yet reaching all the way to the mountains of Central America.
At Acorns, we believe the best coffee tells a story — and with El Salvador Diamanté, it’s a story that starts in the highlands and finishes in your cup.