Horsham Coffee Roaster - Nicaragua Finca Idealista Honey Micro-Lot

In January, our head Roaster Matthew was lucky enough to spend some time in Nicaragua with Ben Weiner, founder and director of Gold Mountain Coffee Growers. He visited many of the partner producers as well as Ben's own farm, Finca Idealista and was blown away by the attention to detail paid to processing and the breadth and impact of the social enterprise elements of the business.

Finca Idealista sits on a mountaintop that borders a nature reserve, whose trees act as a natural air conditioner for its Paca & Caturra variety coffee beans. This cool microclimate lengthens the coffee cherry maturity process, allowing beans more time to absorb natural sugars and other attributes that contribute to a rounded cup profile.

Finca Idealista workers receive the highest wages around. Local pickers are trained to pick only the reddest cherries so that the farm’s crop reaches its full potential and highest level of sweetness. Extraordinary care is taken, both during wet and dry processing, to inspect all beans and ensure that only the finest, ripest coffee is exported. In addition to washed coffee, the farm has invested in special infrastructure to increase production of natural and honey process coffee, with outstanding cupping results.

Finca Idealista invests in volcanic filters to protect the environment from run-off when coffee is washed. The volcanic material is brought from Masaya, one of Nicaragua’s volcanic regions. The farm saves its best coffee cherries to make coffee cherry tea and uses the rest as nutrients for coffee plants and fruit trees.

In addition to its focus on quality, Finca Idealista supports the growth and development of the community through educational supplies and running water for schools, scholarships and medical supplies, free computing classes for girls, and new initiatives based on needs assessment.