Roberto Bendaña calls July 19, the day of the 1979 revolution in Nicaragua, one of the happiest days of his life. His father called him from Nicaragua--he was living in Costa Rica at the time--to say the Sandinista guerrillas had finally taken over the capital city of Managua, defeating dictator Anastasio Somoza García and his hulking National Guard. "I was only 12 years old," says Bendaña, "but I remember wearing red and black bandannas around my neck--the color of the Sandinista flag--and going to the central park in San José to the political meetings supporting the revolution."
The revolution promised to free the poor and middle classes from the shackles of Somoza, who together with his brother and father had lorded over Nicaragua for 45 years. Somoza's support had first buckled after the 1972 Managua earthquake, which killed 12,000 Nicaraguans and left 300,000 homeless. Somoza and his friends pocketed nearly all of the international aid money, leaving the city decimated. By the time of the revolution, even the wealthy elite were calling for Somoza's ouster.
But two years after the revolution, Bendaña's family was no longer a supporter. The Sandinistas--locked into a conflict with the Reagan-supported Contras--had grown increasingly paranoid. They deported Bendaña's father, who had been a coffee farmer his entire life. "They deported him because he was an American citizen, 'an enemy of humanity,' and 'a CIA spy,' according to the Sandinistas," explains Bendaña. "But it was really because he was very much involved in the coffee industry promoting private enterprise."
The Sandinistas immediately nationalized the family's two coffee farms, making them government property. Within a few years, the farms were producing only a small fraction of their previous output and Bendaña was living in the United States, attending Texas A&M University and waiting for the opportunity to return to his family business.
Today, Bendaña is nearly 20 years older, and he wears a dark blue business suit in lieu of a red and black bandanna. He doesn't look tired or worn out like one might expect of a man who has lived through a revolution. Rather, his attitude is alert and focused, a demeanor that reflects the responsibility he now feels toward Nicaragua's government.
Bendaña's family returned to its coffee farms following the 1990 democratic election of President Violeta Chamorro. It wasn't a stress-free reunion. Bendaña still had to confront the Sandinista unions that occupied his farms, resorting to wearing a bulletproof vest while chasing down truckloads of his farm's confiscated coffee.
Bendaña has since worked as the consul general and first secretary for the Nicaraguan Embassy in London and as a director general in the Ministry of External Cooperation of Nicaragua. Now he's doing his part to rebuild what the revolution nearly destroyed--Nicaragua's once strong coffee industry. Bendaña is the executive secretary of the Comisión Nicaraguense del Café (the Nicaraguan Coffee Commission, also known as CONICAFE). He, along with a growing number of other coffee growers, are taking steps to improve the quality of Nicaraguan coffee, including committing the entire country to farm with a strong sense of social and environmental responsibility. It's a task that could have significant consequences, both for world consumers of specialty coffee and for Nicaragua itself. If the Nicaraguan coffee industry--which has traditionally provided one of the country's largest export crops--can right itself, rural economies in Nicaragua can begin to recover and the country can continue to climb from its struggles of a mere 10 years ago.
Bendaña and his fellow farmers took some of their biggest steps this April, when a group of growers exhibited at the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) trade show in Denver, Colo., and then toured several coffee businesses in the San Francisco Bay area. The growers wanted to present their case that Guatemala and Costa Rica are not the only countries in Central America that grow premium coffee and that Nicaragua has the potential to be one of the prime suppliers of specialty coffee to the U.S. market.
A grand claim for the smallest coffee producer in Central America, to be sure, but one with a solid foundation. Kevin Knox, coffee buyer for Allegro Coffee, says Nicaragua could produce some of the best coffee in the Americas for years to come. "Of any country in Central America, Nicaragua probably has the brightest prospects for producing large quantities of very high-quality specialty coffee," says Knox. "If you talk with old-timers in the industry, 20 or 30 years ago, the better Nicaraguans were considered right up there with a top Guatemala Antigua, as good or better than the best Costa Ricans."
Bendaña chose San Francisco as the site of the Nicaraguan coffee tour because it's a regional center of U.S. specialty coffee culture. The growers looked at the tour as a chance to promote Nicaraguan coffee to Bay Area importers and roasters and to learn about the specialty market so that they could take that information back to Nicaragua.
JavaVentures, a coffee-tourism company based in San Francisco, organized the tour, with President Kimberly Easson running the show. Easson has taken many U.S. roasters and retailers to growing countries, but has only recently worked such trips in reverse. Her first was in 1997, when she brought 28 Brazilian growers to Hawaii to learn about the only state in the U.S. that grows commercial coffee.
This trip was different, however, because the Nicaraguans weren't there to share information with other farmers; instead, they wanted to learn about the specialty market. Easson planned a three-part excursion: The first day the growers would visit a number of coffeehouses, the second they would visit roasters and importers (followed by a reception honoring the Bay Area Nicaraguan community), and on the third they would learn about wine appellation systems in the Napa Valley.
Four growers traveled to San Francisco: Bendaña, who also owns two coffee farms; Miguel R. Gómez, the vice president of the Nicaraguan Specialty Coffee Association and the owner of the Hacienda la Ilusión plantation; Erwin J. Mierisch and his wife, Brenda, who run three farms and an exporting business; and Eddy Kühl and his daughter Karen, who operate the Selva Negra Coffee Estate and mountain resort.
Many of Nicaragua's coffee farms were founded by German farmers. Bruno Mierisch, Erwin's great grandfather, was German, as were Eddy Kühl's ancestors. Esteban McEwan was of Scottish descent. And all have Latino ancestry while also speaking good English. Even in the small country of Nicaragua, coffee has a vibrantly international flavor. Here are some highlights of their American tour.
Emeryville, CA
Bendaña and the other growers are standing in the cupping room of Peet's Coffee & Tea in Berkeley, Calif., listening intently to Peet's Vice President Jim Reynolds discuss his expectations of imported green coffee. "Every batch we've ever roasted, we've taken a sample," says Reynolds. "We cup for consistency."
He says the company uses Nicaraguan coffee mostly in blends, but that it would offer Nicaraguans as single-origins were it to find those elusive great coffees at the cupping table.
As an educational experience, Peet's passes muster; the growers learn the standards that Peet's expects of its green coffees, and the roasters meet the growers and are able to connect faces to regions and specific farms. The two groups also discuss the finer points of coffee cultivation, Nicaragua for its expertise in everything from water treatment to worker housing. Fortunately for the Kühl family, Selva Negra was never confiscated by the Sandinistas, although Eddy did move to the U.S. with his wife and children after growing disenchanted with the Junta government. He left the farm with his mother and cousin, then returned in 1990.
Now the farm is ECO-OK certified by the Rainforest Alliance, meeting the environmental and social standards of the U.S. conservation group. In addition, Selva Negra is currently experimenting with a small plot of land dedicated to organic coffee. Kühl doesn't yet want to go completely organic because of the financial and agricultural risks, but it's typical of his thinking that he would at least test its feasibility before making a decision one way or the other.
Kühl also runs the most famous hotel in Nicaragua, an asset that gives him the ability to show visitors just how he runs his farm, whether they be other farmers or tourists.
"Our object [in San Francisco and Denver] was to show American coffee buyers that we are united and willing to improve and guarantee our relations to U.S. buyers and consumers," says Kühl. "Most of the children of the biggest coffee growers of Nicaragua have gone to American universities, speak English and want to do business with the U.S. In 1990, only two Nicaraguans attended the SCAA convention. This year, there were at least 30."
Emeryville, Calif.
The employees of Royal Coffee Importers have it tough; they're located on the waterfront in Emeryville, Calif., and have a view of the San Francisco Bay out their cupping room window. Their building is a vast improvement over the gray and white monoliths that many roasters and importers inhabit. Royal President Bob Fulmer tells the growers that the first time his company ever bought Nicaraguan coffee was in 1984, one week before the Reagan administration imposed a U.S. embargo on all Nicaraguan goods. Timing is everything--Royal never received the coffee.
The discussion between the growers and importers is informative and upbeat. Fulmer tells the growers that Royal wants as much information as possible on the origins of the coffees it buys, both for its own illumination and to answer the questions of its roaster clients. Given the current interest among roasters for shade-grown coffees, Fulmer says its a natural for farmers to market their coffees as such. Still, he says, Royal ultimately buys by cup quality, not necessarily bean size or growing conditions.
One oft-discussed subject is the quality of bourbon and typica coffee trees versus some of the hybrids, such as catimor or caturra. It's a topic of interest to many farmers focusing on the specialty market, especially those who converted to hybrids years ago and don't want to make the large investment in time and resources it would take to convert back. But Fulmer says the difference in quality will define whether a farm is considered specialty or commercial. He used to think caturras cupped the worst of the hybrids, but now he believes catimors cup the poorest. Bourbon and typica usually receive the highest praise.
A big reason that Nicaraguan coffee quality declined so significantly in the '80s is the same reason that it shows such potential to thrive in the year 2000 and beyond. So many coffee farms were abandoned or ignored during the decade of Sandinista rule that farmers never had a chance to soak their farms with chemical fertilizers and pesticides or tear out their older coffee plants and replace them with newer hybrids. This, combined with Nicaragua's growing conditions--including those in Matagalpa, Jinotega, Segovia, and Estelí, which are close to ideal for coffee cultivation--means the industry now has the chance to pick up where it left off.
"Instead of increasing the coffee production, the Sandinistas decreased the coffee production," says Erwin J. Mierisch, another of the growers in San Francisco and the owner of three farms, explaining why quality concerns were de-emphasized for a number of years. "They encouraged the cutting down of coffee trees and forest trees in order to plant corn and beans. The Sandinistas nationalized the coffee industry; they would only pay the producer 40 to 60 cents a pound per coffee, even when the prices were much higher."
As a result, there were few incentives for farmers to grow quality coffee. Those who stayed on their farms didn't invest heavily in the future because they feared the government would confiscate their properties. Today, those same farmers know that quality is essential if they want to compete in the specialty market. Nicaragua is known for its proud and passionate personality. Most Nicaraguan farmers, once they have a good system in place, will put their hearts into producing the best product possible.
That processing diligence translates to coffee with very few defects. Bendaña says that since Nicaraguan farmers discovered the U.S. specialty market, they've been making a concerted effort to eliminate all processing problems.
Knox backs Bendaña's claim. "I've seen a lot of mediocre Nicaraguan coffee samples offered over the last five years," he says, "but I've rarely seen one that was fermented or has another serious defect like that, which is a routine problem in Guatemala and other countries. Costa Rica has always been the standard for processing care. But there's a lot of communication between these countries, and I think Nicaragua has a leg up when it comes to consistency in the processing."
What do great Nicaraguan coffees taste like? "If you like the basic Guatemalan flavor profile with chocolate, spice and high acidity, the great Nicaraguans are like that but they're more lush," says Knox. "They're a more hedonistic coffee. Inevitably great coffees reflect the soil--and when you look at the world-class rum and cigars that also come out of Nicaragua--you know the country has good soil." Boxed Sidebar
To understand Nicaragua, you need to do more than study its civil war. Perhaps more than any other country in Latin America, Nicaragua's national and political character has been influenced as much by poets as by politicians. Rubén Darío is celebrated as the nation's poet emeritus, a man revered as perhaps defining a nation through his art. One story has it that a member of the Nicaraguan government's "Cultural Brigade" began reciting a Darío poem during a break in fighting between the Contra and Sandinista armies. Soldiers from both sides were moved to the point of laying down their weapons and listening peacefully to the masterpiece. The Contras reportedly began applauding, at which point all hell broke loose once again.
José Coronel Urtecho and Pablo Antonia Cuadra were two other influential Nicaraguan poets whose work helped define a generation. They helped found the Vanguardia in the 1920s, a literary movement that transcended art when its leaders supported Anastasia Somoza and his "healthy dictatorship." Ernesto Cardenal was a member of the Generation of 1940 poets; he later became a spokesman for the 1979 revolution. As Nicaragua's Minister of Culture, Cardenal promoted poetry workshops, in order to spread the country's rich tradition of literary achievements among the rural campesinos and workers.
It's a tradition that explains much of Nicaragua's appeal to curious outsiders. During the country's many struggles, its citizens have managed to comport themselves with remarkable eloquence.
Reprinted with permission from Fresh Cup Magazine, "the Voice of the Specialty Beverage Industry." Annual subscription is $35 for 12 issues. To subscribe, call 503-236-2587, or visit the Fresh Cup website at www.freshcup.com.