Costa Rica: Don Mayo - La Ladera

Nicaragua: Limoncillo, Red Caturra, Honey This super sweet cup is like orange candy, with a gentle white grape developing alongside and a little shoulder of greengage on the finish. The coffee we have here hails from the Matagalpa region of Nicaragua, grown and processed for us by our good friends the Mierisch family. This is one of our longest continuing producer relationships as we’ve been buying coffee from their farm, Finca Limoncillo, since 2007, and we foresee that continuing for many years yet. The second single origin coffee we’re releasing from this year’s harvest is a Honey-processed Red Caturra. On The Farm All of the Mierisch family's Nicaraguan coffee farms are sprinkled across the Jinotega and Matagalpa regions in the northwest of the country. They’re dotted on either side of the mountain range that forms the border between the two departments. When Roland travels to visit the farms, he’ll generally see Limoncillo on the same day as La Huella and Mama Mina, as they are close to one another. The journey typically starts at Mama Mina, continues through La Huella, and finishes at Limoncillo, the largest of the three farms. Finca Limoncillo is a premium coffee farm and jewel of the Mierisch family, nestled at 1,200 metres above sea level in the lush mountains of Matagalpa, Nicaragua. Spanning 171 hectares, 109 of which are dedicated to coffee cultivation, the farm is known not only for its breathtaking landscape, with nine waterfalls crossing its terrain, but also for its role as a benchmark in Nicaraguan specialty coffee. Owned by the highly respected Mierisch family, known for their experimental processing, varietal work, and exceptional coffees, Limoncillo is home to a wide range of varietals including Caturra, Red Bourbon, Pacamara, and Java. People The very first Mierisch farm was founded in 1895 by German émigré Ernst Bruno Mierisch Boettiger. He was compensated by the Nicaraguan government for his engineering work on the construction of the Pacific railroad between Masaya and Diriamba with a parcel of land, including a goldmine and a farm he named "Sajonia" (the Spanish spelling of his home region in Germany, Saxony). In 1908 he planted his first coffee tree. Today, Fincas Mierisch operates nine coffee farms in Nicaragua and three in Honduras. More than 100 years later, the family business is run by his grandson, Dr. Erwin Mierisch Buitrago (third generation), and great-great-grandson Erwin "Wingo" Mierisch Jackman (fifth generation). Wingo has been involved with the farms since 2017, contributing to everything from post-harvest processing to roasting, cupping, and green coffee sales. His passion for innovation and research has led him to head the development of new post-harvest processing methods at the mill and refine quality control protocols to increase both quality and consistency. With Wingo’s input, the team at the Don Esteban mill have heavily invested in processing experimentation. Erick Lopez is the Head Agronomist of the Mierisch farms. He started his career at entry level 22 years ago, working in the fields. Recognising his talent and commitment, the family promoted him and funded further education, enabling him to progress into his current leadership role. He now oversees much of the day-to-day operation of the farms. The Fincas Mierisch team includes many employees who have worked with the family for years, and their expertise and dedication make the high quality of both product and service possible. The family employ more than 3,000 staff during harvest, and at Limoncillo over 60 families live on the farm full-time. They are genuinely loved by the people who work for them. More than any other producer we buy from, there is a clear sense of mutual respect and appreciation between the family and their workers. The fact that the Mierisch family are our friends allows us to see the finer details of how they care for their team, continually reinforcing our belief that good people grow good coffee. Sustainable Coffee Beans The family have numerous policies and initiatives in place to make their operations as sustainable as possible. Chemical use is kept to a minimum, and environmental impact is carefully managed through thoughtful land stewardship. In 2024, the farm completed a 15 kW hydroelectric plant, furthering its commitment to sustainability by supplying renewable energy to both farm operations and the 60 on-site families who live and work there. Alongside its coffee-growing areas, the estate also supports cattle and horses, while large sections of preserved forest help maintain biodiversity. The Mierisch family’s commitment to social responsibility is equally impressive. They provide housing, meals, childcare, education, and healthcare for workers year-round, and pay wages that exceed the local minimum by 30%. Precision Processing The Don Esteban mill, located on Finca Limoncillo, is the central processing hub for the Mierisch family’s farms in the Matagalpa region. Named in honour of the family patriarch, the mill is engineered with precision and flexibility in mind, allowing the team to adapt processing methods to suit each varietal and lot. Coffee cherries are carefully hand-picked before being depulped using state-of-the-art eco-pulpers, which significantly reduce water usage while offering precise control over the amount of mucilage left on the bean. Depending on the desired outcome, whether washed, natural, or honey processed, coffees are either fermented in tiled tanks or dried slowly on covered African-style raised beds. This approach allows for clean, traceable expressions of origin and varietal character. To read all about Honey processing, check out our article here: Pulped Natural & Honey Processed Coffee Explained Traceability Country: Nicaragua Region: Matagalpa Municipality: Yasica Norte Farm: Limoncillo Producers: The Mierisch Family Farm Size: 171 hectares Coffee Growing Area: 109 hectares Protected Rainforest: 54 hectares Varietal: Red Caturra Process: Honey Elevation: 1,200 m.a.s.l. Harvest Months: October-February Diurnal Temperature Cycle: Avg High 25°C, Low 17°C Awards: Cup of Excellence 2008 (2nd Place) Cupping Scores Cupping Notes: Orange Candy, White Grape, Greengage Cup of Excellence Cupping Scores Clean Cup: 6.5/8 Sweetness: 7/8 Acidity: 6/8 Mouthfeel: 6.5/8 Flavour: 6.5/8 Aftertaste: 6/8 Balance: 6.5/8 Overall: 6/8 Correction: +36 Total: 87/100 If you'd like to find out more about how we score coffees, make sure to read our blog post “What Do Coffee Cupping Scores Actually Mean?” and if you'd like to try cupping yourself, we've got a guide to that too! What is Coffee Cupping. Roasting Information Medium Dark - Through the gap and let this develop a little, paying close attention to the heat and dropping before second crack.

Bolivia: Gregorio Palli, Anoxic Washed Sweet brown sugar fills the cup, with a pop of red grape at the start and a soft nectarine which follows and lingers into the finish. An elegant nutmeg spice on the aftertaste makes this a complex but balanced coffee. This Bolivian Caturra and Catuai coffee was grown by Gregorio Palli on his farm Volcan Del Tigre, before heading to the Agricafe Buena Vista mill to be processed using their Anoxic Washed technique. A Family Story When Gregorio was a young boy, his parents decided to move from their home in the Muñecas province of Bolivia (just north of Lake Titicaca) and travelled to the Caranavi area to provide him a better education. There was no school in their town, the roughly 100km relocation was worth it to give Gregorio a good start in life. Gregorio is now a full-time coffee producer, living on his 12-hectare farm with his wife Daisy and his two youngest children. In his free time, Gregorio enjoys going on walks around town with his kids, swimming in the river, and playing football. He has owned his coffee farm for 35 years now and the little ones love to help their dad out when they can. His brother Julio also runs his own coffee farm nearby, as does his daughter Nancy (one of his two grown-up children from his first marriage) who has graduated from helping on the farm to running her own. Clearly the move to Caranavi was a felicitous decision for Abuela y Abuelo Palli! The Best Bolivian Coffee The Caranavi province sits towards the western edge of Bolivia, on the eastern slopes of the Andes mountain range. Caranavi means "high place" in the Aymara language, one of the indigenous languages spoken in Bolivia. Caranavi province is in a transitional zone between the high Andes and the Amazon basin. It is known for its lush vegetation and has been dubbed the "Coffee Capital of Bolivia" for its ideal growing conditions and over 13,000 hectares of plantations. Caranavi is the hub for amazing Bolivian specialty coffee. Caranavi town (the capital of the province) itself is too low in altitude to grow coffee, so the farms are all situated in the surrounding hills. The Palli family’s farms are dotted around the Copacabana colonia (the Bolivian term for small agricultural villages), as are some other Ozone favourites such as Vincent Palli and Martin Chorino. It’s safe to say the region produces some truly delicious coffees. Tigers and Gold Gregorio’s farm covers 12 hectares in total but only 2 hectares are currently used to grow coffee. It is named Volcán del Tigre, which translates to "Tiger’s Volcano" in English, although "tigre" is used locally to mean jaguars. Prior to becoming the well-tended specialty coffee farm it is today, the land used to be very overgrown with wild vegetation. Local people used to say that they saw smoke rising from one of the hills in the jungle and thought it must be a volcano. Legend has it that when smoke comes from the hills, there's gold to be found there. Around the same time, nearby residents also noticed what appeared to be a footpath running through the land. This turned out to be a tiger's path, worn into the landscape by prowling big cats. To this day, Gregorio doesn't keep animals on the farm as they might become el tigre's next meal. He is looking to expand his coffee-growing area over more of the remaining ten hectares on his farm and is really excited about what the future at Volcán del Tigre holds. Tomorrow Looks Bright Gregorio’s farm is part of the Sol de la Mañana project, run by our Bolivian exporting partners Agricafe. He says he's already learned a great deal about sowing coffee and fighting coffee pests. He's had issues in the past with leaf rust, borer beetle, and mycena citricolor, but thanks to the programme he's been able to get them all under control. When growing coffee on such a small plot of land, even a small portion of the coffee harvest being lost to pests can be devastating to a producer, so ensuring harvests remain unspoiled is vital to maintaining a stable income. The programme provides training in coffee agronomy to small producers. Meaning "The Sun of Tomorrow", this programme supports small local producers to increase their long-term efficiency and quality of production so that they can become sustainable. The Los Rodriguez farms play into this, with the varietals, techniques, and processing methods they develop being passed on to the Sol de la Mañana producers. Farmers receive support in understanding not just coffee agronomy but cupping, coffee markets, and much more. The coffee from these producers is delivered to Agricafe’s Buena Vista mill in the evening and processed there. Each lot is rigorously separated, measured, and controlled to ensure the very best quality coffee. What Is An Anoxic Washed Coffee? So how was this coffee processed, you ask? This is an Anoxic Washed lot. Both anaerobic and anoxic are ways of saying "without oxygen". Depending on the context, the words can mean different things. Sometimes when you see these terms they’re indicative of totally different processes, while other times they simply refer to a different tweak of the method within the same system. In this case, "Anaerobic" refers to the more traditional method of producing coffees where oxygen is limited during fermentation. That entails creating a sealed environment (in a plastic bag or fermenting vessel) with coffee cherries in water and allowing the yeast and other microorganisms present to consume all available oxygen before switching to anaerobic fermentation. "Anoxic" is a new variation on this goal from the Los Rodriguez team and Adrian, who is in charge of the Buena Vista wet mill. It involves the same initial steps of placing the cherries into a fermenter, but then a low-pressure CO₂ flush is applied to remove oxygen from the system. This creates an environment without free oxygen from the very beginning. Because there is no free oxygen in the system to allow yeast or bacterial growth to begin naturally, a viable yeast population must be added to facilitate fermentation. In this case, the population is grown from a sample isolated from a coffee cherry from one of the Rodriguez farms. Compared to Carbonic Maceration, the difference is that the CO₂ is not under high pressure. It is simply being used to displace the free O₂. This process is the end result of the La Linda "Experimental" Washed coffee that we bought last year. This year we see it producing very fruit-forward coffees which are nonetheless very clean. The profile that results from this type of processing is very different to a typical washed coffee, a fascinating variation that tastes a lot closer to what you’d traditionally expect from a natural. Traceability Country: Bolivia Department: La Paz Province: Caranavi Colonia: Copacabana Producer: Gregorio Palli Farm: Volcán del Tigre Elevation: 1,400 - 1,650 m.a.s.l Variety: Caturra & Catuai Processing Method: Anoxic Washed GPS: 15°48'56.8"S 67°31'40.9"W Cupping Scores Cupping Notes: Brown Sugar, Nectarine, Nutmeg. Cup of Excellence Cupping Scores Clean Cup: 6.5/8 Sweetness: 6.5/8 Acidity: 6/8 Mouthfeel: 6/8 Flavour: 6.5/8 Aftertaste: 6.5/8 Balance: 6.5/8 Overall: 6.5/8 Correction: +36 Total: 87/100 If you'd like to find out more about how we score coffees, make sure to read our blog post “What Do Coffee Cupping Scores Actually Mean?” and if you'd like to try cupping yourself, we've got a guide to that too! What is Coffee Cupping. Roasting Information Medium Dark. Through the gap and lush, take this through the gap and to the cusp of second crack before finishing the roast.

El Salvador: Finca Argentina, Yellow Pacamara, Natural Fresh, sweet pear fills this elegant cup, but there a restrained funk from the natural process which adds a miso caramel edge to the finish and then a delicate bite of bitter orange on the aftertaste. Roland last visited El Salvador in February as the harvest at Finca Argentina was just coming to an end. The farm is at a lower altitude than other producers we work with in El Salvador, so that shifts the harvests a little earlier than San Jose or Nejapa for example. He travelled with Mauricio to visit the Los Ausoles mill to cup the various fresh lots from the farm and everybody agreed that the Yellow Pacamara was tasting terrific this year. On the table at the time the samples included a Washed and a Natural, both of which cupped very well. You can buy Natural Yellow Pacamara coffee right here. On The Farm Near the town of Turin, in El Salvador's Ahuachapán department, you'll find Finca Argentina. Set within the Cordillera de Apaneca-Ilamatepec and surrounded by natural hot springs, the farm sits at 1,300 metres above sea level. Its 35 hectares are divided into seven distinct areas, or tablons. Each of these plots has its own character, shaped by the landscape and the subtle differences in microclimate that come with changes in altitude, aspect, soil, and even local volcanic activity. Over time, the team at Finca Argentina have invested heavily in exploring different varietals, learning which perform best in each part of the farm. The Martinez Family The farm was first acquired by the Martinez family in 1967. Dr Luis Guillermo Martinez bought the estate, and it quickly became his favourite and produced well. By the time his son, Mauricio, inherited in 2008, the cherry yields had dropped significantly, and he was unsure how best to proceed with his newly owned farm. It was here that his son (and our now good friend) Alejandro stepped in. He had just relocated back to El Salvador after working as a city banker in New York and decided to lend a hand to his father’s business interests while looking for work. Ale’s interest was piqued when he saw that the farm had been classified for a Q auction in 2005, showing it had the potential for great coffee. He and his cousin based in London set about sending green coffee samples to roasters anywhere they could, seeking a specialty buyer. One of those landed with us in 2008 and we’ve been buying ever since. Mauricio and Alejandro both now live in Canada, but Mauricio still owns and oversees the farm remotely. He relies on his farm manager and the on-site team to handle day-to-day operations and to keep him up to date, while visiting El Salvador regularly to check in. The Martinez family employ 50 people during the harvest and 30 the rest of the year. Mauricio's daughter Beatrix, who hadn't previously been involved in coffee, is also now stepping in to help with the family business. Processing of the coffee is carried out at the Los Ausoles dry mill, a cooperative facility in Ahuachapán. They have a very good relationship with Mauricio and have shown great consistency and reliability for us as buyers. Highly Skilled Workers Throughout the growing season at Finca Argentina, individual workers are given a lot of responsibility over pruning and managing trees. On many farms, pruning would be quite regimented (for example, every other tree gets a skeleton prune in this section), whereas Finca Argentina are leaving these decisions much more up to the knowledge of the staff, deciding on a plant-by-plant basis what kind of pruning is needed when they work through an area. It is easy to ruin coffee production on trees if you don’t make the right pruning choices, so this shows a lot of trust and is only possible when they retain and develop their workers’ skills long term. El Salvador has been hit hard by the wider labour shortage impacting other Central American countries. Luckily Finca Argentina are currently managing well, but they are having to consider more ways to retain necessary numbers of staff during harvest season. The Martinez family employ 50 people during the harvest and 30 the rest of the year. They contribute labour and materials to improve infrastructure in their community’s towns, and grow 25 kg of corn annually for each person. They’re also implementing more ecological management: using compost and other organic products to minimise environmental impact, and intercropping beans to enrich the soil. Their work has improved the land’s biodiversity and cup quality, and the future for sustainable coffee from Finca Argentina is looking very bright. What Is Yellow Pacamara? The Yellow Pacamara coffee trees are mostly planted in the upper sections of the Finca Argentina, in the San Jorge tablon and upper parts of the adjacent tablons. The San Jorge tablon has been planted exclusively with Yellow Pacamara since 2018. The seeds for the Pacamara plants growing here were sourced from the Mierisch family in Nicaragua. You may well have previously enjoyed a Limoncillo Yellow Pacamara roasted by us. These plants are cousins! The varietal has been performing very well on the farm in El Salvador. The team at Finca Argentina love it for its productivity and hardiness, which fascinatingly are not qualities you would expect from this varietal when grown back in Nicaragua. The varietal originated from a cross between Pacas and Maragogipe. Its initial selections were made by the Nicaraguan Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) in 1976 but were never completed following the Sandinista revolution. Further selections were later made by private producers in Central America, but the variety has never been stabilized, meaning that the plant's genetics are not stable from generation to generation. It is grown primarily in El Salvador, where it often dominates Cup of Excellence competitions for its high cup quality. Check out our Varietal Guide for more information on Yellow Pacamara here: Coffee Varietal Guide: Pacamara Traceability Country: El Salvador Department: Ahuachapán Municipality: Ahuachapán Nearest Town: Turín Mountain Range: Cordillera de Apaneca-Ilamatepec Farm: Finca Argentina Producer: The Martinez Family Dry Mill: Los Ausoles Elevation: 1,300 m.a.s.l Variety: Yellow Pacamara Processing Method: Natural GPS: 13°56'29.4"N 89°47'04.1"W Cupping Scores Cupping Notes: Pear, Miso Caramel, Bitter Orange. Cup of Excellence Cupping Scores Clean Cup: 7/8 Sweetness: 6.5/8 Acidity: 6/8 Mouthfeel: 6/8 Flavour: 6.5/8 Aftertaste: 6/8 Balance: 6.5/8 Overall: 6.5/8 Correction: +36 Total: 87/100 If you'd like to find out more about how we score coffees, make sure to read our blog post “What Do Coffee Cupping Scores Actually Mean?” and if you'd like to try cupping yourself, we've got a guide to that too! What is Coffee Cupping. Roasting Information Medium - Through the gap and let this develop a little, paying close attention to the heat and dropping well before second crack.

Bolivia: Pedro Flores, Mosto Washed Think delicate, sweet white peach and a little pop of white grape. A twist of lime to it and a sprinkle of white sugar sweetness makes this a sweet but elegant coffee. This is the second lot of single origin coffee beans we sourced from Pedro Flores this season. The first, released earlier this year, was a Dry Fermented Washed coffee, this lot makes a beautiful comparison by taking the same crop of Caturra and Catuai coffee cherries and processing them via the Mosto Washed method. Two very different approaches to Washed processing for two delicious Bolivian coffees. Pedro’s Farm Pedro Flores’ farm is in the small colonia of Villa Rosario, a short drive east of Caranavi city. The Caranavi province sits towards the western edge of Bolivia, on the eastern slopes of the Andes mountain range. Caranavi means "high place" in the Aymara language, one of the indigenous languages spoken in Bolivia. Caranavi province sits in a transitional zone between the high Andes and the Amazon basin, it’s known for its lush vegetation and has been dubbed the "Coffee Capital of Bolivia" for its ideal growing conditions and over 13,000 hectares of plantations. Pedro has about 2 hectares of land spread across a ridge at 1,500 metres above sea level. He’s very aware of how the plants respond differently depending on the different microclimates they experience on one side from the other. He’s part of the Sol De La Mañana project, run by our Bolivian coffee exporting partners Agricafe. The program provides training in specialty coffee agronomy to small producers. Through this, he’s learnt to replant his land and manage his coffee plants more methodically to get both quality and consistency. Looking To Tomorrow Meaning “The Sun of Tomorrow”, this program supports small local coffee producers to increase their long term efficiency and quality of production so that they can better grow sustainable coffee beans. The Los Rodriguez farms play into this, with the varietals, techniques, and processing which they develop on the farms being passed on to the Sol De La Mañana producers. The producers get support in understanding not just coffee agronomy but cupping, the coffee markets, and much more. The coffee from these producers is delivered to Agricafe’s mill - Buena Vista - in the evening and processed there. Each lot is rigorously separated, measured and controlled to ensure the best quality for the coffee. In Bolivia, even a small portion of the coffee harvest earning less than a good speciality coffee price would be devastating to the producers. To ensure only the very ripest coffee cherries are picked, it's not uncommon for producers in the Sol De La Mañana program to do 7 or 8 harvesting passes across their plants, many more than producers in other parts of the world do. This is very labour intensive and yields smaller amounts each pass but ensures great quality coffee. The downside is that for each delivery of cherries from the Sol De La Mañana producers in Bolinda, the lots are often too tiny to process separately and so it’s common for coffee from these smallholders to end up as blended lots which means we can’t always trace the coffee back to individual farms. Thanks to improved traceability and deeper collaboration with the Sol de la Mañana program, we’re now seeing more availability of single origin coffees like this one from Pedro. Roland was particularly excited about this new development for our 2025 harvest Bolivian coffees and said, "It’s a significant step forward - not just for transparency, but for recognising the skill and dedication of individual farmers whose work could otherwise go unnamed". Juicy Juicy Mosto The meticulous processing carried out at the Buena Vista mill manages the fermentation, depulping and drying processes to ensure exceptionally high quality coffee - aided by their onsite laboratory where the coffee is analysed daily and its progress tracked. Through their exacting systems and traceability, alongside a world-class cupping team, they've been able to refine their techniques whilst continuing to learn for the future. Mosto is a Spanish word which describes fresh fruit juices - specifically before they are fermented. The same root gives the English word for this, used in wine-making - a Must. Once the fresh cherry is delivered to Buena Vista mill, it goes through a de-pulper to remove the skin and fruit pulp from the seeds. Starting with two batches of coffee, the first is processed using the regular Washed technique (depulped, fermented in a closed tank, rinsed, and taken to dry) and the liquids from that first fermentation are saved. With the pH and microbial levels closely monitored and managed, the next batch of coffee cherries then goes through its own processing – with the fermentation step carried out with the fresh coffee beans submerged in this mosto juice. Utilising these fresh, already fermenting juices for the second coffee gives the process a kick start which seems to help develop the complex, juicy flavours in these coffees. After fermentation is complete, the coffee is thoroughly washed to remove all remaining mucilage, then taken to raised drying beds where it slowly dries to the optimal moisture content. To dive into Mosto coffee processing in more detail, check out our blog article here: https://ozonecoffee.co.uk/blogs/coffee-processing-explained/what-is-mosto-processing Traceability Country: Bolivia Department: La Paz Region: Caranavi Town: Copacabana Colonia: Villa Rosario Producer: Pedro Flores Farm size: 2 hectares Elevation: 1,500 m.a.s.l Variety: Caturra & Catuai Processing method: Mosto Washed Cupping Scores Cupping Notes: White grape, white sugar, lime. Cup of Excellence Cupping Scores Clean Cup: 6.5/8 Sweetness: 6.5/8 Acidity: 6.5/8 Mouthfeel: 6/8 Flavour: 6.5/8 Aftertaste: 6/8 Balance: 6.5/8 Overall: 6.5/8 Correction: +36 Total: 87/100 If you'd like to find out more about how we score coffees, make sure to read our blog post “What Do Coffee Cupping Scores Actually Mean?” and if you'd like to try cupping yourself, we've got a guide to that too! What is Coffee Cupping. Roasting Information Medium dark - here's why this one goes darker than you might expect. The mosto process builds an unusual amount of sweetness into the coffee long before it reaches us, fermented in the must of its own cherries rather than plain water. That sweetness gives us room to work. So we take it through the gap between the cracks, developing slowly, then push to the edge of second as the roast finishes. On most delicate coffees that would be a mistake. Here the white peach and white grape hold their nerve, the lime twist survives, and the extra time only deepens the sugar.