About Finca Monte Sión
Family History
Family and spirituality are cornerstones of Monte Sión (“Mount Zion”) coffee farms. The name of the business refers to the biblical place where God reigns, and peace and love are key ingredients to the decision-making of the company.
The passion for coffee has run through the family’s veins since the 1890s. Lilliana is the fourth generation of coffee growers in the family and now runs the administration side of the business, including the mill, customer relationships, and the exportation process.
The Monte Sión brand is the umbrella for the family farms. Each farm’s name was carefully chosen, because the Bible says that “the tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (NIV Proverbs 18:21). Monte Sión Farm means ‘God´s Mountain’, while Shekinah Farm means the ‘Glory of God’. Manantiales Farm means ‘Place of Water Springs’, Cielito Lindo Farm means ‘Beautiful Sky’, Shalom Farm means ‘Peace’, and Maranatha Coffee Mill means ‘Christ is Coming Soon’. These names declare goodness and wellbeing over the properties and their workers.
Lilliana’s father, Luis Ernesto Urrutia, has always been the bastion of the business, and even at the age of 85 still strides across the coffee fields with the gait of a much younger man. He is a resilient, passionate, and committed person who starts the day at 5:00 a.m. making sure the agricultural program is followed to guarantee the coffee’s excellence and quality. His daily talks with the workers give the family important day-to-day feedback to make improvements.
One of Lilliana’s first cherished memories is walking the coffee farms with her parents, hand in hand, wanting to run up the steep mountain and hoping to see a deer. But now her preferred time of year is that special moment when the coffee flowers open and spread a strong scent of jasmine throughout the fields. During the harvest, she loves listening to the chanting of the pickers, seeing their smiles and hearing their laughs every time they fill their baskets with perfectly ripe cherries.
Core Values
Monte Sión bases their business model in three key pillars:
Consistent Quality – All coffee cherries are carefully harvested by hand at optimum ripeness to guarantee the fullest and highest quality taste. The farms benefit from a mild climate, shadegrown areas, and high altitude between 1,200 and 1,700 meters in the Apaneca Mountain Range. The area is well-recognized for its high quality coffee in El Salvador. Clients love the consistency of the coffee year after year; its sweetness, bright acidity, and complex flavors make it an excellent option to be sold as single origin, blend, and espresso.
Eco-friendly Practices - Monte Sión believes in taking care of the land and people entrusted to its protection. Environmental conservation is a priority, and the agricultural practices focus on maintaining sustainability.
Social Responsibility – Providing security and a livelihood for the farmworkers is one of the family’s biggest priorities. Monte Sión cares for its people and serves the community through a philanthropic branch called Fundación Montesion Nuevo Amanecer (Foundation Mount Zion New Dawn). This foundation offers important economic and healthcare assistance to the community, providing the farms’ workers with clothes, blankets, medical care, and even building wells where water is scarce. The foundation also provides a daily meal to students at local schools.
The Land and Its Coffee
The Monte Sión farms are nestled in the Apaneca mountain range of Western El Salvador. Visitors can see the Chingo Volcano in the distance, right next to the border between El Salvador and Guatemala. The volcanoes in this area make for an impressive microclimate that yields fertile land conducive to coffee growing.
The Monte Sión farms also form part of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, which connects natural areas across Central America. This bridge of land acts as an important link between South and North America and is used by migratory birds and animals. Monte Sión is careful to follow sustainable practices to ensure the safety of this special flora and fauna, and they do not allow hunting on their grounds. They protect the biodiversity of the coffee forest including the bees, birds, deer, snakes, and trees native to El Salvador.
Monte Sión is in the process of renovating its farms. Currently, 80% of the areas in production grow the Bourbon variety. The farm also experiments with Pacamara, Marsellesa, SL28, Yellow Bourbon, and Geisha varieties. Monte Sión has been in an ongoing renovation to increase its production, replacing approximately 5-10% of its coffee trees each year. As a result, any tree on the property will be no older than 20 years.
Through growing coffee, Lilliana has learned that everything changes and so it is important to reinvent, improve, and adapt. To keep up with the changing demands of running the farms, the company invests in innovation and technology. The team uses soil and leaf analysis to understand which fertilizers will best serve the plants. Recently, Monte Sión joined a satellite monitoring system which enables the farms to have a bird’s eye view of their properties. This technology also allows them to detect climate conditions that might affect the fertilizers’ effectiveness or increase plagues and rust that would harm the plants. With this information, Monte Sión engages in preventative rather than reactive farm maintenance.
The Mill
One of the family’s biggest accomplishments has been establishing its own mill for processing and roasting. Before this, the company sold its coffee to a Cooperative that then sold the coffee in its own name. The mill has allowed Monte Sión to build its own brand and to sell directly to its customers.
The mill is small but very efficient. It started as a wet mill in 1990 and was converted into a dry mill in 2002. Monte Sión invested heavily on African beds to dry the coffee and now can dry most of their production on raised beds.
Most importantly, the mill has ‘Chain of Custody’ and Rainforest Alliance certifications, which mean Monte Sión guarantees its coffee’s traceability. The company can track their coffees from the day the cherries are picked, with a full record of the pre and post-harvest activities.
Monte Sión uses honey, natural, and washed processes. Lilliana notes that the farm prides itself on its high quality coffees and clean processes, which places Monte Sión coffee above the rest for their clients. A few of Monte Sión’s coffees are:
Natural Processed Specialty Coffee Micro Lots / 87+ Cupping Score
Fruity aroma, good body, excellent sweetness, intense flavors of peach and red wine. Juicy aftertaste with light hints of passion fruit.
Honey Processed Specialty Coffee Micro Lots / 86+ Cupping Score
Intense aroma of chocolate, full and creamy body, and citric tangerine-like acidity. Notes of chocolate and panela, and a pleasurable aftertaste with notes of honey. Excellent balance.
Top of Top Shade Dried Specialty Coffee / 85+ Cupping Score
Sweet aroma, medium and creamy body, bright citric acidity. Notes of milk chocolate with a long aftertaste, intense sweetness and juiciness.
What’s Next
Due to its increased production, Monte Sión is now looking for new long-term partners. As Lilliana notes, “we see ourselves as associates, partners with our clients - we like to know what they like and meet that need, and give them the support to commercialize the coffee.” Currently, Monte Sión has direct export relationships with customers in Japan, England, Australia, and New Zealand. It has worked with its Japanese clients, direct exporting its coffee since 2002. Given Japan’s strict requirements for coffee, these long-term partnerships are proof of Monte Sión’s consistent high quality and strong relationships.
Lilliana marvels at the possibility that her three children may stay involved as the fifth generation of the family business one day. They love cupping coffee and learned to appreciate black coffee at a young age. As they grow, Monte Sión will continue to build upon its three core values of consistent quality, eco-friendly practices, and social responsibility. The business will stay true to its cornerstones of family and spirituality, continuing to maintain sustainable agricultural practices and impacting its communities positively.
Farm Specs
SIZE: 200 manzanas (approx. 494.21 acres)
ALTITUDE: 1,200 - 1,700 masl
VARIETAL: Bourbon, Pacamara, Marsellesa, Geisha, SL28
PROCESS: Honey, natural, washed
FLAVOR PROFILES: Caramel, Panela, Chocolate and Passion Fruit
LOCATION: Atiquizaya, Cordillera de Apaneca, El Salvador
Contact Information:
Email: narvaezurrutia@gmail.com