Aida Batlle

Aida Batlle is a Salvadoran coffee farmer and businesswoman. She won El Salvador's inaugural Cup of Excellence competition in 2003 with her Finca Kilimanjaro, one year after she began farming coffee.

Batlle focuses on organic methods and hand-harvesting fully-ripened coffee cherry to produce single-origin coffee beans.

Early life Batlle's family had farmed coffee in El Salvador for four generations. Her great-great-grandfather, Narciso Avilés, the governor of Santa Ana Province, is credited with bringing the Bourbon coffee bean to El Salvador from Guatemala in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.

Coffee farming Batlle returned to El Salvador in 2002 at the age of 28. The wins convinced her father and the farm managers that "coddling" the coffee cherry could be a good business strategy. Cascara in Spanish means skin or peel of fruit. Batlle works as a consultant to designate other growers' coffees as an "Aida Batlle Selection", which commands a premium.