About This Coffee
Dr. Enrique Ferrufino, a surgeon by trade, was born and raised in a coffee farm in the mountains of Matagalpa in 1956. Together with his wife Silvia, a pediatrician, the Ferrufino family decided to go into the coffee business in 1992 and bought Finca Aurora in 2004. They inspired in their three children a love for coffee from a very early age. Since they acquired Finca Aurora, the whole family has worked together to produce great coffee.
One of the core values of the business is to inspire people through coffee. Throughout the years they have invested in providing workers with fair wages, safe living conditions, health services, food, and education. They also work with smaller producers in the area to help them improve their farming practices.
This Marsellesa Anaerobic lot combines the great cup quality of its Bourbon parent and the disease-resistance of its Timor parent.
Cultivation
Preserving nature is a top priority for the Ferrufino family. They only use renewable energy and work diligently on conserving water resources and natural habitats. The farm houses a variety of native trees, home to many species of birds and wildlife. These trees also provide the plantation with shade and fertilize the soils with organic matter, which protects the land from erosion, droughts, and floods.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
After selective handpicking, cherry is pulped and sealed in airtight tanks where it ferments for 60 hours. After fermentation, cherry is laid to dry on raised beds. It takes about 20 days for cherry to dry. Finca Aurora is one of the first farms in Nicaragua with a fully integrated coffee operation on-site. They produce, wash and dry the coffee at the farm. The coffee is milled, sorted and bagged at Beneficio Finca Aurora under the watchful eye of the farm’s team. This allows full control over the quality throughout the process.
About Marsellesa
Marsellesa is a hybrid variety in the Sarchimor family. Sarchimor family plants are a hybrid of Villa Sarchi (a natural Bourbon mutation, like Caturra and Pacas) and a coffee leaf rust (CLR) resistant hybrid from Timor-Leste. Marsellesa is a good mix of the flavor profile from Bourbon (via Villa Sarchi, a close genetic relative to Bourbon) and the resilience of the disease-resistant hybrid from Timor-Leste.
Coffee in Nicaragua
Nicaragua may not be the most famous producer of Central American coffee, but it has great potential. The country is known as the land of ‘los lagos y los volcanes’ (lakes and volcanos) and has many coffee growing ‘pockets’ that few have heard of or experienced. Many producers in the country are experimenting with new varieties and processing methods, making it a specialty origin to watch.
Many coffee producers in Nicaragua today are buoyed by cooperatives that provide a wide array of services, supports and opportunity. As seen in the win of the ‘El Acuerdo de las Tunas’, where 3,000 landless workers won land rights, collective action by farmers can be far more effective at enacting widespread change than the advocacy of individual farmers.
Cooperatives and farmer associations in Nicaragua encompass a large percentage of the country’s coffee producers, and they are taking their destiny in their own hands. By putting great emphasis on quality and by aiming for the international specialty coffee industry, cooperatives and farmers associations are helping their members gain influence and import that will, hopefully, garner enough profit to enable farmers to continue to improve and invest in their farms and their families.
Large and medium-sized (10+ hectare) farms also hold a significant place in Nicaragua’s coffee landscape, as well. Many of these farms have also prioritized social and environmental issues and are working on quality improvements at both cultivation and post-harvest levels.
Farmers, for the most part, will process coffee on their own farms, and the majority of the time coffee is dried on large drying patios under sun.