Silvio Sanchez at Santa Teresa de Mogotón is a first generation farmer and also part owner of our 'spiritual sister company' Paso Paso, the farmer-owned roastery in Germany. Buying coffee from Silvio, as well as from other Paso Paso farmers, supports the model of farmers owning the lucrative step of coffee roasting and builds towards a sustainable future for coffee farming. We really love coffees like this that sit in the middle between our classic brown coffees and fruitier blue coffees. It's got loads of body, and big chocolate notes with a pop of cherry sweetness. 

Silvio Sanchez grew up inNueva Segovia in Nicaragua, a region that has a long-established coffee growing tradition that has recently declined due to financial pressures that make the industry unappealing. Farmers and agricultural workers there often struggle to make a living, and many choose to emigrate in search of better opportunities. Silvio and his mother, in spite of not coming from coffee growing families, decided to buck the trend and start a farm that would be, as they describe it, 'a model farm', one that aimed for best practices in terms of coffee quality and environmental and social impact. They've achieved their dream, and the farm not only produces excellent coffee, but is also a real community, the farm team have a barbecue every week where they spend time together and discuss production, upcoming harvest, problems and successes. The community Silvio has cultivated with his team is one of the keys to the stability of his business. Santa Teresa de Mogotón is named for the mountain "Cerro Mogotón" upon which it sits, just below the peak. Mogotón is the highest mountain in Nicaragua, so it is a spectacular setting. It is also ideal for the cultivation of high quality arabica, with good levels of rainfall, lots of sunlight in the day thanks to proximity to the equator, great shade coverage for slow maturation, and low enough nighttime temperatures to create the 'stress' plants need to fruit. The only problem is too much moisture to dry coffees, but Silvio and his team have come up with a clever solution: they pack the cherries carefully into plastic crates and drive them down the mountain to his home town of Ocotal, which lies at the bottom of the valley where it is much hotter and dryer. There Silvio processes the coffee as naturals. The additional time of sitting cherries while they are loading and transporting allows for a degree of extended fermentation which is one of the reasons for the more developed fruity notes in the coffee. 

We are really happy to have this coffee and to be able to work with Silvio. This is year one of the relationship and we hope there will be many more years of buying his coffee. One of the included pictures is from World of Coffee at the start of July where Micah and Will hung out with Silvio and the rest of the Paso Paso team. Hopefully we'll get to hang out again soon!