Latin America

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by OrdinaryPeople, #19.

Finca El Jaguar is a family-run farm in Nicaragua’s Jinotega province, 188 km north of the capital Managua. The farm is also a registered private reserve under the Alianza Para Las Areas Silvestres (ALAS), a bird conservation organization. It includes 70 acres of protected cloud forest, 60 acres of managed forest, and over a dozen coffee plots totaling 34 acres.  Another 35 acres is grassland.  The coffee is certified organic.

El Jaguar offers eco-lodging, with birders and researchers welcome. The farm is one of seven sites in Nicaragua with a wintering bird banding program, part of the important MoSI project (Monitoreo de Sobrevivencia Invernal – Monitoring Overwintering Survival).  This project is an essential tool that enables researchers to gain insight into what bird species winter in an area, the habitats they use, and their overwinter survival. Another Nicaraguan organic shade coffee farm and ecolodge is working on establishing a MoSI station, Finca Esperanza Verde. Their coffee is sold in the U.S. as Counter Culture Matagalpa Cafe San Ramon.

We have already posted on the importance of Nicaragua to birds, Nicaraguan coffee in general here.

Thus, it is a pleasure to review a coffee from a farm that represents what we focus on here at Coffee & Conservation — Allegro Coffee Roaster’s Finca El Jaguar, available at Whole Foods Markets. Finca El Jaguar was a recipient of Allegro’s High Five for Farmers program in 2003, which donated $4,000 to make improvements to the local school.

Allegro’s Finca El Jaguar is a light roast (full city), with a great, fresh, slightly nutty aroma. It was very smooth, and while not endowed with many distinctive flavors, it had a nice body and enough richness for one reviewer to comment that it would make a great afternoon cup. This is not a coffee that will knock your socks off — it has a classic coffee profile variously described by our reviewers as “simple,” “benign,” and “soothing.”  The Risky Kingbird noted, “It’s not too complicated — and I appreciate that.”  We gave it 3 motmots.

This coffee also garnered 90 points at Coffee Review.

I will add that the MoSI stations across Latin America and the West Indies operate on a shoestring, with local researchers enduring hardships and primitive conditions to do this important work.  You can sponsor a station for a winter season for only $300.  For more information sponsoring a MoSI station, visit the Institute of Bird Populations web site.

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #16.

The two major natural foods markets, at least in our region, are Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.  There are more TJ’s close to me, but I’ve always been a bit frustrated by their coffees.  Determining origin on most of their self-branded beans is difficult, if not futile.  Some of their offerings are okay (the Organic Bolivian is decent), but even Coffee Review found most to be average (notice also the lack of origin info on most). More on TJ’s in this post.

Whole Foods, on the other hand, is much more transparent. Although they carry several additional brands (varies regionally), including Intelligentsia and Counter Culture’s Sanctuary line of shade coffees, Whole Foods features coffees roasted by Allegro Coffee Company in Colorado. Allegro is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Whole Foods, acquired in 1997.  The Allegro web site has a page where you can download their social responsibility scorecard and coffee sourcing report.

Today’s review is of Allegro’s Organic San Marcos from Honduras. It is a Special Reserve selection. Growers of Special Reserve coffees receive $10,000 to fund community initiatives.  This coffee is from the COCOSAM cooperative in San Marcos de Colon, Choluteca department in southwestern Honduras (red on map). Around half the growers of this nearly 100-farmer co-op grow certified organic coffee.  The varieties grown are bourbon, caturra, and catuai.

This is a light roast (full city). There was no roast date on the bag, but a “best used by” date of 3/23/07 and the healthy bloom when prepared on 16 January indicates a 12/23/06 roasting, or thereabouts.

As a mixed lot from a number of farms, I did not expect it to approach the excellence of the single estate Honduran El Puente from Counter Culture, one of my favorite Central American coffees. The San Marcos is also grown at a lower altitude than the El Puente, a factor that might also argue for points off the flavor profile. But the tasting panel agreed this was a really enjoyable coffee.

Like nearly all Honduran and Guatemalan coffees we’ve sniffed, the San Marcos had a beautiful aroma.  I don’t think I’d ever get tired of smelling beans like this, although the coffee rarely lives up to the (small) room-filling fragrance.  At any rate, the San Marcos had a profile typical of good Central Americans: hints of vanilla, milk chocolate, and caramel.  This coffee was very smooth, almost buttery, with an especially creamy mouthfeel that we thought added a lot to the experience.  This was, unsurprisingly, most pronounced when prepared in a press.  It was also excellent brewed, although I’d skip the paper filter and use a gold filter to preserve some of the creamy smoothness.  We give this 3.75 motmots.

Since they are so accessible to many people, we’ll be reviewing at least two more Whole Foods/Allegro coffees in the future.

Caffe Pronto Guatemalan Maya Ixil.  I received this coffee from Caffe Pronto just before the holidays, so I did not have a chance to let the panel taste it, so I can’t provide the usual review.  But this coffee’s sustainability begs to have it mentioned here at C&C.  This is bourbon variety coffee, grown organically under native shade trees, and certified Fair Trade.

The Maya Ixil cooperative is located in Quiche Dept. (map), east of the popular Huehuetenango, north of Atitlan, sort of out of the way.  The coop was formed in 1998, and now 124 families have improved both the quality of their coffee and the quality of their lives. The Cuchamatanes montane areas in this region are known for their endemism, especially of amphibians.

I’m very fond of the chocolately tones in Huehues; I had a hard time detecting chocolate in this coffee. It was mild, with a distinctively silky, creamy mouthfeel, and when made in a French press, revealed just a flash of some sort of sweet, fruity taste which did not strike me as a berry flavor.  It was also very nice brewed, and maintained a pleasant taste even when cooled off. If you are looking for a very approachable, environmentally-friendly coffee that also supports indigenous people who have suffered through years of conflict in this relatively remote region, give this a try!