This is our third time working with Danny Moreno. His washed Pacas offers a clean, comforting, and complex cup with notes of stone fruits, cherry cola, and milk-chocolate-like sweetness.
 
Filter coffee:
Clean and sweet with nectarine, cherry cola, and milk chocolate
 
Espresso:
Clean and effective - stone fruit and grape-like sweetness with a light chocolatey body. 
 
Cappuccino/Flat white:
Necatrine jam on a buttered Brioche.
 
The Producer:
Danny is one of the Moreno brothers, producing excellent coffee in El Cedral, Santa Barbara.
 
The Moreno Family saga starts with the father, Daniel Moreno, dividing his land among six brothers: Miguel, Mario, Danny, Olvin, Jesus, and Gerardo. The oldest of six, Miguel, was the first one to understand the possibilities that growing specialty coffee was offering and pushed forward. Already back then, the tradition in the area was to either move or at least visit the USA as a seasonal worker to earn money.
 
Over time, Miguel convinced all the brothers to focus on coffee cultivation, and they worked the land and built infrastructure to pursue quality. It paid off, and the town of El Cedral is a good example of the development and progress a healthy supply chain can achieve. Morenos have been able to buy more land, build wet mills and improve infrastructure including the water and electricity supply of the town as well as plant new varieties and improve processing methods.
 
On our first visit to the Santa Barbara region in early 2014, one could feel that something special was happening on the mountain range. The coffee was already delicious, but sometimes lacked consistency due to difficult growing conditions. Now, ten years later, Santa Barbara is one of the most renowned coffee regions in the world, with producer numbers up four times. In 2024, 8 out of 10  top coffees in the Cup of Excellence came from this region and included two lots from the Moreno family. 
 
Danny is one of the most active of the brothers. He plants new varieties and experiments with processing. His farms include El Filo, La Sierra, and Los Andes
At the legendary El Filo farm, Danny grows primarily the Pacas variety. The farm, as its name suggests (El Filo=The Edge), is situated on both sides of a steep ridge, thus creating multiple microclimates with varying amounts of sunlight, wind exposure, and shade. Moreno brothers are strictly against cutting down trees on their land and have started to plant indigenous shade trees such as wild avocado on their farms.