Posted on August 9, 2004 - by deCadmus

Nicaragua: A Vintage Classic

Busy, busy, busy building the new site that will live at this web address. Meanwhile…

Ken Davids has his August reviews online, this time its a barrelfull of beans from Nicaragua. Nic’s on the way up, says Ken…

“…a fairly consistent Nicaragua flavor profile has emerged: sweet, balanced, rich, often full-bodied, with more emphasis on the low-toned chocolate and apricot/papaya side of the fruit sensation than on the higher-toned, floral, citrus side.”

Ken sagely notes the contribution of Thanksgiving Coffee’s Paul Katzeff, who has been an tireless promoter and supporter of Nicaraguan coffees for most of his career. Good on him. Really.

Nicaraguan coffees came up as a point of a lengthy and thoroughly engaging conversation with Lindsey Bolger last Friday. [I suspect Lindsey has forgotten more about coffee than I've learned yet... and I don't think she's forgotten much.] While Green Mountain does not today offer a single-origin Nic, it sources a number of Fair Trade Organics from Nicaraguan coops for its blends. It’d be nifty to source a single-origin bean, but it’s not always about what we want… it’s about what’s in the cup.

Learned from Lindsey: Nicaragua’s vintage Bourbon varietals have survived the country’s political tumult… perhaps they’ve survived because of it. In either case, Nicaragua was never planted with the high-yield hybrids that have become the bane of Central coffees — the Catimors and their ilk — and as a result, their seedstock is something of an heirloom gene pool.

Here’s hoping nobody pees in that pool…