Nicaragua: La Huella, Striped Orange Bourbon

A fresh and vibrant medley of strawberries and passion fruit opens this elegant and complex cup, shifting into black grapes on the aftertaste. As it cools, the fruit sweetness comes to the fore, with delicate hints of orange and nectarine sitting behind those sweet strawberry notes.

This is our second year buying this Nicaraguan coffee, first tasted by chance on a visit to La Huella in 2024. It was love at first sip when Wingo mentioned they had experimentally separated some noticeably striped cherries off from the main Orange Bourbon harvest. There wasn’t enough for us to buy from that very first tiny picking, but Roland kept chasing to make sure we got some the next year, and we’ve now been able to buy this unique Washed Striped Orange Bourbon coffee again for 2026.

A farm in the clouds

All of the Mierisch Nicaraguan coffee farms are sprinkled across the Jinotega and Matagalpa regions in the north west of the country. They’re dotted up either side of the mountain range on the border of the 2 departments. La Huella is on the Matagalpa side, to the south. When Roland travels to visit the farms, generally he’ll see La Huella on the same day as Limoncillo and Mama Mina as they’re close to each other. You start at Mama Mina first, then through La Huella (with a stop for fresh tortillas for lunch at the wet mill in-between!) before heading on to Limoncillo, the biggest, to finish. La Huella is one of the youngest additions to our long relationship with the Mierisches, planted in 2014 in the misty hills of El Arenal.

La Huella mostly grows Java and Red Catuai, with a lower number of shade trees mixed in compared to other Mierisch farms. This is due to the overcast microclimate caused by the local geography - foggy clouds sit over the farm for much of the day, doing the job shade trees do elsewhere. So while most coffee farms need to add canopy, La Huella has to keep it deliberately sparse, or the plants don’t get enough light to thrive. They also grow a small collection of exotic coffee varietals here, including this Striped Orange Bourbon.

People

The very first of the Mierisch farms was founded in 1895 by German émigré Ernst Bruno Mierisch Boettiger. He was compensated by the Nicaraguan government for his engineering work on the construction of the pacific railroad between Masaya and Diriamba with a parcel of land - a gold mine and a farm he named “Sajonia” (the Spanish spelling of his home region back in Germany, Saxony). In 1908 he planted his first coffee tree, today Fincas Mierisch have 9 coffee farms in Nicaragua and 3 in Honduras. Over 100 years later the family business is now run by his grandson, Dr. Erwin Mierisch Buitrago (3rd generation), and great-great-grandson, Erwin “Wingo” Mierisch Jackman (5th generation).

Erick Lopez is the Agronomist at the head of the Mierisch farms, he started his career at the entry level 22 years ago with their team working in the fields. He showed talent and commitment, so they promoted him and financed his further education to enable him to move up to his current position. He now oversees most of the practical operation of the farms. The Fincas Mierisch team has an abundance of employees who have been with them for many years, their expertise and skill are what make the great quality of product and service they provide possible.

Processing

The family’s wet mill for La Huella is right on the edge of the farm, located in-between La Huella and Mama Mina. This is where coffee harvested from both farms is collected to be cleaned and floated to remove any over/under ripes and damaged beans. For Washed and Honey coffees the cherries are also de-pulped here as needed. The mill uses state-of-the-art eco-pulpers, which significantly reduce water usage while offering control over the amount of mucilage left on the bean, crucial for precise processing. All coffees (Naturals in cherry, Washed/Honeys in parchment) are then transported to the separate dry mill a short drive down the hill.

The Don Esteban mill, located at a lower altitude than the farms, is the central processing hub for the Mierisch family’s farms in the Matagalpa region. Named in honour of the family patriarch, the mill is engineered with precision and flexibility in mind, allowing the team to adapt processing methods to suit each varietal and lot. Depending on the desired outcome, coffees are either fermented in tiled tanks or dried slowly on covered African-style raised beds, allowing for clean, traceable expressions of origin.

To read all about Washed processing check out our article here.

Coffee with stripes?

While Roland was visiting La Huella in 2024, Wingo mentioned that he had noticed they have 2 types of Orange Bourbon on the farm. Some fruit has a uniform colour all over, while some has tiger stripes of pale and dark orange. Normally this all goes together to be processed, but he wondered if separating them would have a different flavour. He asked the pickers to separate the striped cherries out on their own and ended up with a tiny trial amount of 2 kilograms. We cupped it together and were blown away! It was a delicious coffee, like strawberry fondant chocolates. Roland thought it was so good that he asked for the next year’s crop of Orange Bourbon coffee be fully separated so we can have the striped portion. He continued bugging Wingo about it for a year and we finally secured 1 single sack of this very special coffee. After the success of the first crop, we’re thrilled to have managed to buy this again this year. There’s just one bag, and we’ve got it!

From chatting with Luis Rodriguez, who helps run Finca San Jose in El Salvador, we know that in the Amarangia that we buy from them (a mix of orange and yellow Bourbon) their orange is all striped, the trees on their farm don’t produce any solid orange cherries. Other places have just solid orange. So the striped stock is not unique to La Huella, the interesting thing is that they have both versions of the varietal on the farm. Whether it’s correct to say this is a different varietal we can’t be sure, what we can definitely say is that this Orange Bourbon is different to the other Orange Bourbon that comes out of the farm. We have cupped the solid orange from La Huella alone too and it’s very nice, it presents a bit heavier in body than the other Bourbons, but it doesn’t have the same wow factor as the striped version from this farm. We’re delighted that we managed to get this lot, it’s a great example of what can happen when you work long term with partners at origin, you work together to try and achieve great coffees like this.

• Country: Nicaragua
  
• Community: El Arenal
• Region: Matagalpa
  
• Farm: La Huella
  
• Producers: The Mierisch Family
  
• Farm Size: 171 hectares
  
• Coffee Area: 76 hectares
  
• Varietal: Striped Orange Bourbon
  
• Process: Washed
  
• Elevation: 1,315-1,400 m.a.s.l.
  
• Harvest Months: December-March
  
• Diurnal Temperature Cycle: Avg High 21°C, Low 15°C
• Maps: Google Maps / Apple Maps

Cupping notes: Strawberry, passion fruit, black grape.

Cup of Excellence Cupping Scores

• Clean Cup: 7.5/8
  
• Sweetness: 7.5/8
  
• Acidity: 6.5/8
  
• Mouthfeel: 6/8
  
• Flavour: 7.5/8
  
• Aftertaste: 6.5/8
  
• Balance: 6/8
  
• Overall: 7.5/8
  
• Correction: +36
  
• Total: 91/100

If you'd like to find out more about how we score coffees, make sure to read our blog post “What Do Coffee Cupping Scores Actually Mean?” and if you'd like to try cupping yourself, we've got a guide to that too! What is Coffee Cupping.

Medium.

This coffee needs a deft touch. Grown at over 1,300 metres, it's a dense bean that benefits from enough development to bring out its sweetness, so let it run through first crack and into the gap. Don't push too far towards second, or you'll lose the vibrant fruit sweetness and the strawberry and passion fruit will flatten out.