Grupo Cafetalero
El Labrador: La Florencia

La Florencia Mill is located in the northern part of Nicaragua, in Ocotal Nueva Segovia. This "dry" mill has the capacity to patio-dry and to dry mechanically about 25000 fanegas (46kg bags) on a continuous flow basis.

Because of Nueva Segovia's climate and altitude range (1000 to 1500 meters above sea level), it produces one of the best quality coffees in Nicaragua.  Its production is 100% Arabica (mainly typica and caturra), using environmentally sound practices, with some organic farms complying fully with the international standards for organic certifications.

Nicaraguan Coffees have been classified around the world as one of the best “Central American milds”, specifically coffee from “La Segovia”.  This specific region has special characteristics which are internationally recognized due to its   participation in the Cup of Excellence and CQI auctions since 2002/2003, where our coffees have rated very highly (with some first place finishes!). Out of 34 coffees auctioned in Cup of Excellence 2007, 20 were from the Nueva Segovia region.

We generally buy from small producers who personally deliver their coffees either to “centros de acopio” (meeting place) or directly to our mill.  The coffees we buy come from 6 different sub regions in the area, which are Dipilto, Jalapa, San Juan, Pueblo Nuevo, Las Sabanas and Estelí.

We receive the parchment “oreado” (semi dry, 40% humidity on the parchment) and proceed to weigh, dry and store it classifying by sub-region and altitude with the necessary traceability to know which farmer produces it.  Once aged we start preparing for export: hand-sorted, of course, having our system fully integrated from humid parchment to export.

La Florencia also has a laboratory where we cup every lot received. These are analyzed each day and sorted based on their quality standard. Each lot received in the mill has full transparency documentation enabling us to identify the quality standard of each sub region for future purchases.

Quality in Nicaragua is obtained from the producer; they are the ones in charge of harvesting and picking the correct cherries and processing them at their micro mills located on their farms. Once processed and received, La Florencia is in charge of preserving this quality throughout the chain by providing our customers service, consistency and transparency lot by lot.

We also take time to visit the growers and explain to them how we want the coffee to be processed, while teaching our personalized classification system.  The norm is to make two passes when processing coffee and sorting into “first” (usually a mix of ripe and semi-ripe cherries) and “imperfectos” (mostly unripe cherries).   Our classification system strives to greater levels of quality, so we ask for our producers to introduce a more stringent sorting process in order to secure only the ripest cherries, resulting in a “first” (ripe cherries), “second” (semi-ripe cherries) and “third” (unripe cherries).  This unique collaboration with our producers guarantees superb quality coffees that our customers have come to love.