Posts Tagged ‘nicaragua’
9th 2008
Late But Timely – Phil’s NicarBLOGua
As some of you may recall, this past February I had the incredible opportunity to travel with Chris and Caroline to Nicaragua to tour some coffee farms. This was my first—and so far my only—trip to origin, and it proved to be a lasting educational experience.
On that trip we were hosted and given the red carpet tour by Intelligentsia’s Steve Mierisch – his family owns and operates several small coffee farms in the Matagalpa region. On our last day in Nicaragua, we toured the Mierisch family’s dry mill, which processes coffees harvested from all of their farms. At the end of the tour we were treated to a cupping that included a flight of various lots of coffee, representing all of their farms that we had just visited. Last month we featured a coffee from one of these farms, Finca San Jose. This coffee was offered through Intelligentsia’s Direct Trade program, and although Steve is an Intelly employee, this was surprisingly the first time they had offered his family’s coffee. It was exciting for me to see this coffee in our shop, as it was the first time I’ve had the opportunity to serve a coffee that only a few short months ago I was watching being picked and processed at origin.
This week we are offering a coffee that is even more special. It comes from another of the Mierisch’s farms, Finca Limoncillo. In the cupping that I mentioned at the Mierisch dry mill, there was one coffee on the table that we all agreed stood out from the rest. A day earlier, Steve had taken us to the very top of their Limoncillo farm to look for a tiny lot of coffee plants that he claimed were extra-special. We were looking for the elusive Java varietal, which apparently is quite rare to this growing region. Steve told us that they only had a handful of plants of this varietal on the farm, and it took even him, who knows his farms like the back of his hand, quite some time to find this tiny outcropping. He told us to look for coffee plants that looked like Christmas trees, and finally after a good deal of searching, we found them. There were indeed only a handful of these trees—perhaps a dozen or so—clustered together. Steve told us that in this years harvest they had separated this varietal into its own micro-lot, and the next day we found a sample of this lot on the cupping table. We all knew right away that this was a special coffee. With a creamy yet tea-like body and notes of jasmine, cedar, and tropical fruit, it was far more delicate and complex than any Nicaraguan coffee I had ever experienced.
As it turns out, this coffee ended up placing 2nd in this year’s Nicaragua Cup of Excellence competition. In 2007, a coffee from one of the Mierisch’s farms received its first Cup of Excellence recognition: 27th place. The fact that only a year later one of their coffees was awarded 2nd place is a testament to the great lengths they have gone through to improve their farming, sorting and processing methods each season. We can only assume that more great things are to come from the Mierisch family farms in the coming years. In the meantime, we are very proud to offer this exquisite and extremely rare coffee, roasted by Intelligentsia. Much hype has been made in the past several years about the superior coffees from the now famous Hacienda La Esmeralda in Panama, and deservedly so. But in my opinion, this Java varietal from Finca Limoncillo, though lesser known, is every bit in the same league as the Esmeralda, and well worth the price. I’m excited that producers like the Mierisch family are starting to bring attention to the fact that Nicaragua is currently growing some of the finest coffees in the world.
We are selling this coffee at Grumpy for $37 per 12oz bag. This price includes hopelessly little markup. And while this still might prove prohibitive for the average coffee drinker, I don’t believe it is at all exorbitant. I have seen first-hand where this coffee was grown. I have seen and touched the very trees that bore this coffee. I have seen and met some of the farmers who pick this coffee by hand for many hours a day to support their families who live in shanty huts with no plumbing. I have seen the pride and care that these people put into growing, harvesting, milling, sorting and drying this coffee. I have seen the commitment Steve and his father and all of their farmers are making to improve their farming techniques and their infrastructures with each growing season. There are a great number of steps involved in producing a coffee of this caliber before it is ever exported or roasted, and every step along the way is crucial the final product in your cup. For those of you with the financial means, I urge you to treat yourself, and consider the price you are paying for this rare coffee a reward for the farmers and their families for all the pride, dedication and difficult labor they have given to bring you this incredibly unique coffee experience. Your purchase of this special coffee not only rewards the farmers for their efforts and supports their families, but also encourages them to continue improving their farming practices in the coming years, with the hope of yielding even better coffees for you to enjoy in the future.
Stay tuned for more Nicaraguan coffees on the horizon. In the not-too-distant future we are expecting the 2008 Flor Azul crop, from the Las Brumas Co-op in Nicaragua. We also met with the farmers from this co-op during our visit, and theirs was one of our most popular coffees when it was on our menu earlier this year. The members of Las Brumas were extremely proud to show us their sustainable growing practices, their all-by-hand wet milling process, their painstaking sorting methods and their new solar dryers. Not only that, but they fed us a magnificent lunch that included vegetables, cheese and coffee all grown on their farms. Never before had these farmers been visited by anybody on the retail end of the production chain, and I could see that it made them proud to know that their coffee was greatly appreciated by consumers. When we told them that their coffee was the bestseller on our menu at our shop in New York City, they were so proud that they hugged each other. With all the improvements to production they showed us during our visit, this year’s crop promises to be even better than last year’s.
As a barista, its has been almost a surreal experience to see several coffees arrive in our shop that I saw only a few months ago as cherries on trees in a country that seems a world away. Having seen where these coffees were born, and after seeing what the farmers go through to bring us these coffees, it feels like a big responsibility to be the final link in the chain and to bring these coffees to fruition in the cup. Every time I serve one of these coffees from Nicaragua, I take a bit more care and pride than usual in placing that cup across the counter. I have enjoyed sharing my experience with customers almost as much as I’ve enjoyed drinking the coffees myself.
Cheers,
Phil
18th 2008
Straight from the rep…
Steve Mierisch was good enough to expand upon and clarify some of the things we mentioned in our
“The co-op members took, what seemed to them, to be a big risk in order to work in partnership with Intelligentsia and their “Direct Trade” program, investing time and money to receive an unsubstantiated higher price per pound, when they could have just kept selling their coffee to large exporters.”
The first part is very correct, the farmers did take a big risk because they didn’t know whether they would be able to meet the quality standards to qualify…the part that I would like to expand on is “to receive an unsubstantiated higher price per pound, when they could have just kept selling their coffee to large exporters.”
The farmers had to have faith in this price structure, but many were willing to give it a shot because the fact is they are receiving a substantially higher monetary amount per lb.
1) For example, if they sell to Intelligentsia:
We pay $1.60 per lb. farm gate or NET to the farmer for 85-87
We pay $1.85 per lb NET to the farmer for 88-93
We pay $3.00 per lb for the Micro lots 94+
Farmers receive immediate payment of $1.21 when they deliver the coffee as wet or dry parchment/pergamino and they receive the remainder around 30 days from export.
2) If they sell as fair-trade:
$1.26 per lb net to the cooperative, then they take out the export cost, co-op fees, processing fees, etc. it would be close to $.90 net to the farmer depending on processing and coop management fees. They must wait a few months to get paid as well.
3) If they sell to the “local” buyer/exporter:
They get -20 or -30 cents from where the market is. They sell it in wet or dry pergamino/parchment form and get their money immediately.
Here is where it gets a little tricky….When the markets (NYBOT C contract) are above this $1.26 fair-trade price guarantee, fair-trade states they will pay the coop 10cents premium above what the market is.
Today the market was around $1.35, this means fair-trade will pay $1.45 to the co-op (approximately $1.09 net to the farmer), the exporter will make immediate payment of around $1.15 net to the farmer, and Intelligentsia pays $1.60 or $1.85 per lb.
It gets a little confusing when the prices go above our guaranteed price of $1.60, because in order for the coffee to carry the “Direct Trade” name we must pay at minimum 25% above what fair-trade is paying, as we use it as a benchmark.
On top of the high prices Intelligentsia pays, it gives $.05 per lb toward a social fund for the farmers involved, this is on top of any developmental projects we do to help them improve quality, for example the solar dryers.
The risk a farmer takes by participating in Intelligentsias Direct Trade model isn’t that they won’t receive a higher price for their coffee because they most definitely will. The risk is the uncertainty of qualification of getting a score of 84 and above, but then if they don’t qualify they can just sell it as fair-trade or sell it locally…
In my opinion the Direct Trade principal/idea is what will make coffee farming truly sustainable.
25th 2008
Coffee (and Beans and Rice…)
Phil, Chris and I recently flew down to Nicaragua for a whirlwind tour of some coffee lands (as a guest of Steve Mierisch, our local Intelligentsia sales rep in NYC). Steve greeted us at the airport and drove us from Managua to downtownMatagalpa where we had our first great meal at his father’s office. From then on, it was non-stop coffee-focused activity punctuated by a two-hour horse ride and some infamous Flor de Caña rum.
We spent one morning with some of the farmers in the LasBrumas Co-op (Intelligentsia’s “Flor Azul” comes from there). It was an honor to meet these people andtheir families and to learn about all of the challenges that come with being soinvolved in producing such quality and select beans. The co-op members took, what seemed to them, to be a big risk in order to work in partnership with Intelligentsia and their "Direct Trade" program, investing time and money to receive an unsubstantiated higher price per pound, when they could have just kept selling their coffee to large exporters. Their work continues and the reputation of the co-op and the quality of the coffee it produces continues to grow. It was great to see how even a seemingly small improvement, like, for one example, the solar dryers, could make things on the individual farms work more efficiently while giving the farmers more control over the quality of the beans.
We talked over lunch about the ways all of the differentparts of the farm work together -how the banana trees give potassium to thesoil, how the old cherry pulp is used to fertilize the ground…so many elementsworking in synchronization in such a beautiful place (altitude 1200-1350m).Local-grown is an understatement here as all the food we ate that day was grownright on the farm. (It was also the first time the growers had met a direct retail account, and the farmers were filled with pride as we told them just how popular their coffees were in the bustling streets of NYC.) 
The next day, after a great breakfast of beans and rice, wevisited two of the Mierisch family farms to look at different varietals ofcoffee trees. There were both yellow and red Pacamara trees on the Limoncellofarm. The yellow cherries tasted like passion fruit – they were very differentfrom what we had been used to tasting with the red cherries. We then searchedlow and high for the elusive java tree. Steve just told us to look for the onesthat are shaped like Christmas trees! We eventually found them. 
My personal favorite farm was Finca San Jose.It was luscious green and magical with an excellent view. When we got there, the cherry picking had just ended for the day and some of the pickers were waiting for a ride back into town for the evening.
The more we saw, from wet mill to dry mill from farm tofarm, the more we realized how much effort it takes to get such great coffee inour cups. We were all captivated by the dreamy beauty of the landscape but thetruck bouncing over the rugged roads kept us alert and focused.
The morning of our departure we visited two dry mills. At one large mill, the processing equipment and tables the“specialty” beans went through were painted one color to differentiate them from the "commercial" equipment. The specialty processincluded so many more sorting and selecting steps just at the dry mill alone(after all of the initial sorting and selecting done from picking onwards).This large-scale division really highlighted what the word “Specialty” coffee means – a word thatalways seemed a bit subjective to me in the past.
We then had the great opportunity to cup coffees from mostof the farms we had visited. Each one on the table was delicious and unique – everyaltitude showed different characteristics. We especially enjoyed the earl greysubtlety of the java beans. A special thanks to Intelligentsia and Steve and his family for hosting us on our brief but captivating visit. Phil’s Nica trip report to follow…
