Nicaragua Matagalpa

Matagalpa’s coffee industry traces to the 1880s, when the Nicaraguan government invited European settlers into the northern highlands: Hans Bosche, a German immigrant from Hamburg, planted the estate that became Selva Negra in the 1890s, and the Kuhl and Hayn families, descendants of that same settler wave, still farm coffee there today. That founding stuck. Nicaragua’s 2011 agricultural census counted 28 percent of the country’s coffee plantations in Matagalpa, second only to neighboring Jinotega’s 35 percent, according to USDA’s Coffee Annual report on Nicaragua.

Farms here run 800 to 1,500 meters, lower on average than Jinotega’s 1,000 to 1,700 meter band, and Matagalpa’s volcanic soil pushes the cup toward brightness and sweetness rather than Jinotega’s denser, more chocolate-forward profile. Caturra dominates local plantings, the same variety that makes up roughly 72 percent of Arabica acreage nationwide, though competition-focused operations like Finca Idealista also grow Catuai, Catimor, and Pacas/Pacamara for natural and carbonic-maceration lots. Picking runs November through March, and washed processing remains the specialty benchmark: on-farm fermentation and a clean rinse that keep the fruit and floral top notes intact.

Two independently published, dated Coffee Review lots average out to a bright, balanced cup: a washed Catuai from Taipei roaster David’s Nose scored nectarine, jasmine, cocoa nib, and almond over a full, viscous body, while a Rainforest Alliance-certified lot grown on the Selva Negra estate itself, roasted by Barrington Coffee Roasting Co., read honey-sweet tangerine and cantaloupe sweetening toward toast and a mild chocolate finish. An older, differently formatted Coffee Review lot from Kaffe Magnum Opus scored comparably, 91 points, apricot and milk chocolate, but predates the current five-attribute format, so it’s discussed here rather than folded into the averaged scores above.