Bureaux Collective and Condesa Co.Lab will host a Spotlight on Aida Batlle on 24 November at Hunted and Gathered in Cremorne, Victoria.
Aida is a fifth-generation coffee farmer and voice for El Salvadorian producers.
For one night only, Aida will be the guest of honour at the Melbourne event. Attendees will be able to sample a selection of Aida’s coffee to begin, before sitting down to hear Aida talk about her work within the industry, and her future plans.
Following the talk, guests will be invited to relocate to Bureaux Collective (a two minute walk) for wine and snacks.
Aida’s family has a long history of coffee farming. Her great great grandfather General Narciso Aviles introduced the Bourbon variety to El Salvador from Brazil in the late 1800s. Her family owns four farms in the Santa Ana region, three at very high altitude, purchased by her father in 1969, 1971 and 1973 respectively, one low-grown 175-hectare farm her great great grandfather purchased in 1938, and her own 14-hectare farm Tanzania, which she bought in 2010.
Aida moved to the United States during the Civil War when she was six and would go back to El Salvador on summer breaks. She decided to move back there in November 2002. Aida packed up her life in Nashville, Tennessee, leaving behind her operations work in hospitality, and started to learn the trade of farming from scratch.
Just one month after her transition into farming life, Aida entered the first Cup of Excellence (COE) 2003 competition in El Salvador. Having never cupped her own coffee before, Aida sent samples from the Kilimanjaro and Los Alpes farms. Incredibly, she became the first female producer to win the COE for her Kilimanjaro coffee.
Aida has become renowned in the industry for her innovative and experimental processing methods. This includes depulping the coffee and fermenting it in tea made from cascara (coffee skins), trialling different fermentations used in Ethiopia, Kenya and Burundi, the development of the Aida Batlle Selection (ABS) certification, and even a process she’s dubbed Sumalvador – a combination of Sumatran and El Salvador practices.
The event will take place from 6pm – 8pm at 68 Gwynne Street, Cremorne, Victoria. Tickets cost $20.
For more information and to book, click here.