News — nicaragua

Bienvenidos a Finca La Aurora in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.

Familia Ferrufino and Finca La Aurora

This month I’m off to Central America to seek out coffees for the coming year. First stop: Nicaragua where I spend a few days with the Ferrufino family visiting their Finca La Aurora in Matagalpa.

 Red Bourbon coffee cherries ripe and ready for harvest at La Aurora.

I first visited La Aurora last March during a trip to Matagalpa and found a farm teeming with activity and a renewed sense of excitement. Doctor Enrique Ferrufino has owned La Aurora since 2005 and has been...

The express bus to Jinotega.

I'm back on the road again, this time I'm off to Nicaragua for twelve days of visiting coffee farms, cupping new crop coffees and also visiting the cigar factory that makes the Fratello cigar. It's been about three years since my last trip to Nicaragua.

Previously, my trips to Central America focused around judging coffee competitions. During those trips, we might get a day or two to visit a farm and cup coffees, but this time it's all about the coffee and seeing what's going on in the world. First stop: Jinotega.

Just finished prepping the new ice creams for The Charmery that they'll release over the next week or so. As we've been moving into regular production with David and Laura, it's been a fun challenge to come up with something interesting every production cycle. Typically, we're preparing about nine gallons worth of ice cream but in order for the flavors to come out right, we're also prepping them days ahead of time. Add to that the calculation of roasting, degassing and allowing flavor maturation of the coffee itself and we're actually looking at about a two week lead time from...

The selection of single origin coffees and Fratello cigars.

I've enjoyed cigars long before I was "into" coffee. Starting around 1993, I thought cigars would be a good way for me to meet interesting and successful people and a long-standing brotherhood, united by the tobacco leaf, been a part of my world ever since. The cigar introduced me to friends who have become lifelong friends and solidified friendships I've had since my youth.

Coffee became a part of my cigar world when I moved back to Baltimore at the end of 1995. The old Rolling Road...