Caitlin Fitzsimmons explores the coffee country of Nicaragua – the ‘land of lakes and volcanoes’.
On the old coffee farms of Nicaragua, some things never change. The farmer, a cowboy hat on his head and a whip in hand, rides his horse. The giant wooden water wheels mill the ripe coffee cherries. The farm hands break for ‘cafe cito’ every afternoon to sip sweet black coffee and watch the sun drop over the blue-green ripple of distant hills.
But one thing has changed – the quality of Nicaraguan coffee is once again attracting attention around the world. Farmers continued to grow coffee even during the war, but 17 years of peace has allowed the industry to flourish and Nicaraguan coffees are making waves at international coffee awards such as the Cup of Excellence.
Jose Lopez Blandon, manager of a midsize farm in the far northern Las Segovias region for the past 13 years, says Nicaraguan coffee is better than ever before and he is particularly delighted that Nespresso is interested in buying his coffee. “It would be an honour because we are seeing Nicaraguan coffee growing in quality year by year,” he says.
Another change is that visitors are coming in record numbers to explore “the land of lakes and volcanoes”, as Nicaragua is sometimes called. The country now lays claim to be the safest in Central America and there is plenty to interest travellers, from lush rainforest and beautiful beaches to charming colonial towns.
Nicaragua is dotted with lakes and the biggest, Lake Nicaragua, is almost an inland sea. It is both the biggest and the cleanest lake in Central America, and it is strewn with small islands where wealthy people own holiday homes. The waters are free to enjoy for everyone and used for swimming, fishing, sailing, kayaking and boating of all kinds. There are also lakes in the craters of some of the volcanoes that snake along the western side of the country.
The capital, Managua, looks like any modern Central American city but the regional cities of Granada and Leon retain the old world pizazz of their Spanish namesakes with colourful colonial buildings. In Granada an imposing cathedral in yellow and white dominates one side of the town square, while grand hotels with columned terraces and balconies in royal blue and rose pink line the other. Leon is a student town, while Granada is just an hour out of Managua and a popular destination for good restaurants and dance clubs. Cuisine from all over the world can be found here but the specialty is steak or seafood, from the lakes or ocean. For breakfast, eggs with ‘gallo pinto’ – beans and rice – are a common menu item, served with, of course, a good cup of coffee.
Up in the mountains, where the coffee is grown, life is quieter. Horses and donkey carts – or foot – are still the main form of transport for many people. At Mario Gonzalez’s farm in the hills near Matagalpa in central Nicaragua, the community has only recently been connected to mains electricity. “People go to bed around 7 o’clock at night and there are lot of children here because they can’t watch television,” he jokes. The farm, which is a diversified holding of coffee, vegetables and cattle, supports around 40 families full time, with up to 120 seasonal workers during harvest. The community has its own school up to fifth grade paid by the farm, and a health clinic run as a 50-50 venture between the farm and a non-profit organisation.
The coffee farms are surrounded by pockets of wild forest, protected by the landowners who value it for the wildlife and to safeguard the water sources. The years of guerrilla warfare damaged many of the wildlife populations and farmers say it is a constant battle to keep hunters away even now. They proudly reel off the animals that make their home on their land, including wild cats, wild boars, monkeys, sloths, wild turkeys, toucans and other birds.
“The most valuable aspect of the farm is the wild forest on the mountain,” Gonzalez says. “Some entomologists came to investigate the high and said the population of insects here is very high, compared to some reserves further south, there’s a rare butterfly.”
The typical Nicaraguan coffee farm is medium size, according to Carlos Palacios, sales and marketing director for coffee exporter Cisa, Nespresso’s Nicaraguan supplier. Palacios, who is himself a third-generation coffee farmer as well as working in business, says small farmers with less than 3.5 hectares under production make up 80% of growers but only account for 36% of total coffee production.
It is also common for coffee to be part of a diversified holding. Gonzalez says he grows vegetables, Christmas trees and runs cattle as well as his 230,000 coffee trees and the benefit is that it provides year-round employment for his workers and protects his income when the price of coffee fluctuates. He adds that growing small amounts can improve quality of the coffee. “Small coffee bean producers are able to be very careful with the little amount of coffee that they grow and keep a watchful eye on the coffee,” he says.
Nicaraguans are passionate about their coffee and in the farming regions many people start drinking diluted coffee as soon as they are old enough to walk. When asked to imagine life without coffee, they shake their head and say “that would be terrible” in a disbelieving voice. Nicaraguans take their duties as host very seriously and their definition of hospitality certainly includes serving coffee to their guests.
Their other passions are family, sport and politics. Cisa’s Palacios says it’s customary for families to gather on Sundays to eat and spend time together. Unlike their soccer-mad neighbours in Central America, Nicaraguans are obsessed with baseball and boxing rather than football, a hangover from the the US influence of the 19th century.
Politics and a rivalry with southern neighbour Costa Rica play another important role in Nicaraguan life. “If we believe in something and believe being mistreated, we’ll react in a very passionate way,” Palacios says. However, he adds that this is now channelled entirely through political means and no one has the appetite to return to the turmoil and upheaval of the war years. “We have learned that what we want is to work and live peacefully and now we are very passionate about peace,” he says.
Consumers in Europe, North America and Asia are contributing to peace in Nicaragua by drinking their coffee, Palacios says. “The more our coffee is in demand, the more income our country will receive and the more income the coffee sector will receive, allowing our coffee growers to continue working.”
Palacios believes the friendliness and openness of the Nicaraguan people shines through in its coffee. “When you drink the coffee, picture yourself at a coffee farm in Nicaragua enjoying a coffee with the person who grew it for you, hearing the monkey holler calling for water, and knowing that drinking that coffee is helping ensuring a future for the children of Nicaragua,” he says.
Nespresso’s Special Club blend
Deep in the hills of Nicaragua, wild cats roam the lush rainforest and howler monkeys call out for rain. It is here, in the human settlements at the edge of the forest, that Nicaragua’s coffee is grown.
The coffee is typically planted in the shade and nurtured with traditional farming methods but each of Nicaragua’s coffee regions has a distinct character. Nespresso’s Special Club is a blend that represents the entire country and is named ‘Jinogalpa’ for two of the most important regions.
The coffee is wet milled at farm level and then gently dried in the sun with Nespresso’s suppliers, Cisa and Atlantic, taking care to trace the coffee from origin to export and not to damage the bean during harvesting or processing.
The coffee is then shipped to Nespresso so the master roasters can delicately roast the coffee and bring out the full flavour. They use a unique split-roasting recipe, meaning that coffee portions from similar origins are roasted separately, and the result is a coffee with a generous body and smooth crema, with soft tones of sandalwood and subtle and refreshing vegetal notes. The strength is 6 and it is at its best in a 40ml espresso cup.
The blend of the coffee is 70% from Cisa and 30% from Atlantic. Atlantic’s main region for the Special Club is Las Segovias in the north of the country bordering with Honduras. This is an area with sandy soils and the farms tend to be less than 10 hectares in size. Cisa’s coffee comes from all over Nicaragua but its contribution to the 2008 Special Club blend is mainly from the big coffee growing regions of Jinotega and Matagalpa, where medium to large farms are more common.
Jinotega in the northern central mountains grows half of all Nicaragua’s coffee. Here coffee is cultivated up to an altitude of 1,400m, with the larger estates around 900m. The soil is shallow and varies from clay to clay loam, and the coffee is bathed in 1,500 to 3,000mm of rainfall from May to January.
The farms near Matagalpa, in the centre of the country, account for a quarter of the coffee of Nicaragua, with similar soil to Jinotega. Altitude is 400 to 1,100m above sea level and the rainfall is 1,500 to 2,000mm annually, mostly between May and December.
Throughout the coffee regions, the coffee trees typically grow on very steep slopes and the main varieties are Maragogype, Maracaturra and Catimore. Temperatures range from 14°C to 32°C, with predominant temperatures between 18°C and 24°C. While the medium to large farms account for most of the production, smallholders make up the numbers and are typically family-run with subsistence food crops such as maize and beans as well as coffee.
Nicaraguan coffee farms are equipped with small wet mills, allowing farmers to wash and ferment the coffee on site and deliver wet parchment to the coffee exporter for drying and further processing.
Nespresso demands excellent quality procedures from all its suppliers. In the case of Cisa, the main exporter for the 2008 Special Club, the company also has ISO 9001 quality certification for buying, processing and exporting. As part of this process, the company keeps track of every coffee delivery, no matter how small, which allows the exporter to identify any problems at farm level and also makes it is possible to customise blends to bring out specific flavours for clients such as Nespresso.
Cisa, has 72 buying agencies and seven dry mills throughout the country, giving deep penetration into the coffee growing regions. Farmers deliver the coffee to the buying agencies in the morning and Cisa takes it to one of its dry mills for sun drying by the afternoon. The speed and efficiency of this process means the risk of damaging the coffee is very low.
Nicaragua has an advantage over its neighbours such as Costa Rica because it has plenty of flat land for sun drying, which is gentler on the beans than mechanical drying.
The exporters work with the growers to improve the quality of the coffee and make sure their farm businesses are running efficiently and sustainably. This includes technicians who visit the farms to check for diseases and advise on how to improve yield and wet mill processes, providing financial support in the off-season and during harvesting, and also holding cupping sessions for farmers to teach them about quality.
An edited version of this article was published in Nespresso Magazine in summer 2008.
This is really cool. I am going to have to try this kind of coffee
Brandi´s last [type] ..If You Prefer Healthy Coffee