Nicaragua - Las Tres Hermanas Tekisic FW [25/26]

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter/Espresso

Filter: 62g/L, 96°C when fresh; 92°C when rested

Espresso: 18g/40g/28-32s trad shots

We're tasting: Very rich and comforting aromatics - stewed fruits and fresh pastry notes remind us of plum crumble. In the cup it's much the same vibe - plum & apple jam, warm maple pecan plait, milk chocolate, a little hint of dried peel. As it cools getting a malty sweetness akin to chocolate malted milk. Peak comfort bourbon flavours.

Traceability

The Story

This is our third year buying through The Good Sourcing, a French importer whose Central American network offers a more interesting range than perhaps we might find through the more established UK-based importers, such that we're happy to take on the faff of moving coffee from Europe to the UK once it lands. We'd like to highly recommend the work that Gabriela does to any other roasters!

Cynthia Morales inherited Las Tres Hermanas (named for her and her two sisters) from her father. The farm sits high in the Dipilto mountains near the Honduran border, with the highest parcels reaching 1600 metres growing under native shade trees. Alongside running the farm, Cynthia teaches coffee cultivation through a government-funded national programme, as one of several women in leadership positions within the Bridazul network.

Claudia Lovo established Bridazul in 2019 to support small and medium-scale producers in Nueva Segovia with agronomic monitoring, training, and pricing designed to cover production costs. Around fifty farms now work with the project. Claudia and her partner Sasa Sestic had built a reputation in the region through their early work applying carbonic maceration to coffee, and Bridazul grew partly from neighbouring farmers seeking access to their infrastructure and expertise. Bridazul also runs a communal beneficio, a central processing and drying station where cherry is brought for controlled drying after initial farm-level picking and processing. For smallholders without the capital to build drying infrastructure, access to a well-run beneficio is often the difference between commodity and speciality pricing.

Bourbon Tekisic is a selection of the Bourbon variety developed by the Salvadoran Institute for Coffee Research between 1949 and 1977 through mass selection: identifying the highest-performing plants, bulking their seed, and repeating across generations. Thirty years of work to isolate genetic lines with the best cup quality potential, not yield or disease resistance. Tekisic now makes up a significant portion of El Salvador's production and has spread across Central America, though it remains highly susceptible to leaf rust.