Nicaragua, a country between Costa Rica and Honduras in Central America, produces one of the best coffees of the world. One of these days I had the pleasure to meet with Don Carlos Alberto Bendaña Albir, for over 25 years a proud coffee producer and the manager/owner of Café Premium Segovia. This coffee is sold in all of Nicaraguan supermarkets and some supermarkets in Miami and Los Angeles USA.
Café Premium Segovia is a coffee with an accessible price for the public in general and is made of a mixture of high and shade grown Arabica coffee varieties (caturra, pacamara, maracaturra, catimor, java and red catuai). It has a floral, citric and lightly chocolate taste and I think that for the European public this coffee would qualify as a “very good”, at an affordable price with a far better than average taste.
This coffee is very interesting because Don Carlos owns the whole production and distribution chain. He grows all of the company’s coffee in four farms or estates in the mountains of Dipilto, Nicaragua: the Estates of Santa Adelaida, Buenos Aires, Las Nubes and Las Vegas. As Don Carlos proudly explains: “All these estates are situated at about 1km from the Honduran border at heights ranging from 1,200 to 1,500 meters above sea level and the plantations are shade grown, with permanent reforestation programs. The combination of fertile soils, height, and rain and responsible coffee techniques result in excellent quality coffee. These estates once were my grandfather’s and they have stayed in the family ever since”.
At the estates they grow, pick, hand select and wet-mill the coffee and then send it to the near town of Ocotal for further processing to pergamino coffee (green coffee still in its outer shell, before dry-milling, is called parchment or pergamino coffee).
The facilities, including the dry mill, are used exclusively for his own coffees, coming from his own farms. The pergamino coffee is stored in the town of Ocotal (near Dipilto) and when the time comes the coffee will be dry-milled to green coffee and send to Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. In Managua roasting and packing takes place, as it is nearer to the main national markets of Managua and the pacific region. This way he guarantees always having fresh coffee and not mixing coffee with others, thus obtaining and maintaining a high quality and 100% traceability.
Café Premium Segovia is a fully integrated company (growing, processing and distributing) that embraces the Total Quality concept, quality control from seedling to the market. Don Carlos’s family has been in the coffee business now for three generations stating: “Quality is more important than quantity, our goal is to produce and process the very best Nicaraguan Coffee”.
And that brings me to the actual purpose of me wanting to talk to Don Carlos. Café Dipilto – a Nicaraguan gourmet coffee.
Generally the Nicaraguan people are not quite interested in drinking a quality cup of coffee and the internal market for gourmet coffees or specialty coffees is almost nonexistent. Don Carlos has another brand of coffee besides Café Premium Segovia and it is called Café Dipilto.
Café Dipilto is a specialty quality, gourmet coffee that has obtained several times good placements at the yearly “Cup of Excellence” competitions of Nicaragua. Café Dipilto is really Don Carlos’s baby. He cherishes this coffee from the selection of the seeds (only the best Arabica plants of the varieties of pacamara, catimor, hybrid, biasarchy and Java) until it is finally packed and send to the markets mainly of Houston, Miami and Los Angeles in the USA, because as Don Carlos says “people here do not appreciate quality coffee”.
Café Dipilto is only grown on the Las Nubes Estate, 30 hectares of coffee plantation at a height of 1,500 meters above sea level near the town of Dipilto along the Honduran border. The virgin soils and the abundant rains produce a top quality coffee with a strong, particular floral flavor with tones of a chocolate aftertaste, good body and not acidy.
With Café Dipilto Don Carlos wants to offer the world his and one of Nicaragua’s best coffees. This coffee he personally supervises and selects the grains and lots that are send to be processed. No mixing with other qualities or coffees from other farms is allowed and this way he guarantees high triple A quality coffee.
Contact: email – cafesegovia.hotmail.com, phone – (505) 25342073
2017