The Story

The Natural Reserve Cerro Datanli – El Diablo is a high massif located between the cities of Matagalpa and Jinotega. It’s a magical place, where birds and butterflies dance around the coffee trees that cling to impossibly steep mountainsides in the shade of the lush cloud forest.

The name of this coffee comes from the mountain range that forms part of the nature reserve Datanlí – El Diablo, in the Isabelia mountain range. Datanlí is an indigenous word that means “where water falls.” This region is one of the richest and most diverse ecosystems in Jinotega, a place with beautiful and impressive forests, where the water sources originate at the top of the mountains and flow all the way down to the farms of countless coffee growers below. The water that flows from this beautiful reserve helps these producers, combined with favourable climatic conditions and much hard work, with the production of their specialty coffees.

The Producers

The farmers of the El Diablo community live exclusively from coffee production as their primary source of income. They stand out for being innovative while adapting to change. Most of them are medium-sized farmers with more than 20 hectares of land, growing other crops for consumption besides coffee. Due to the climatic conditions in the region, farmers and locals also grow vegetables such as carrots, radishes, celery, and staple foods. The main varieties grown here are Catuai and Caturra, but exotic varieties like Pacamara and hybrid varieties like Catimor have also increased to diversify varieties at the farms. More than 10 years ago, the focus was on large-scale commercial coffee production, so over time, efficient agricultural production systems have been developed that are well-adapted to the agro-ecological conditions. Today, with the shift to specialty coffee production and processing techniques, they produce some of the best coffee from Nicaragua while being environmentally conscious. It means farmers have waste management systems to treat water, use the coffee pulp as fertiliser and build living barriers or windbreaks around the farms.