Medium Roast
$20.25 | 12 oz
The Cinco de Junio cooperative, located in the department of Madriz, is our longest-running partnership in Nicaragua. Ever since we started buying from the group in 2010, economic and political conditions as well as climate changes have required the cooperative and its members to adjust their practices in order to produce the best coffee possible. Though their quality has, at times, wavered, their perseverance has not. This season’s lot delivers classic flavors of vanilla, dark chocolate, and stone fruit.
Caturra, Typica, Bourbon, Catuai
Counter Culture only roasts the coffea arabica, but, under the species of arabica, we buy dozens of different coffee varieties from around the world. Learn more about varieties here.
Washed
Processing is the method to turn the fruit from a coffee tree into dried green coffee ready for roasting.
1150 - 1500 meters
This refers to the elevation at which this coffee was grown.
Through early-August 2020
This refers to the amount of time this coffee will be available for purchase at Counter Culture. Availability is determined by supply and also when the coffee tastes the freshest.
The Cinco de Junio cooperative was founded on June 5, 2001. After a few years of financial hardship, the organization lost the confidence of its members and lapsed in 2004, to be reformed and renewed in 2007 with new leadership, a commitment to transparency, and visions of developing stronger relationships with everyone from members to buyers. We first tasted coffee from Cinco de Junio in 2009, when a graduate student spending his summer working with the Fabretto Children’s Foundation sent us an unexpectedly delicious sample from one of the producers in the co-op—whose coffee would go on to take 2nd place in the 2010 Cup of Excellence Nicaragua!. We visited Las Sabanas for the first time in October of that year, and ever since we have worked closely with the leadership of the co-op.
During the 2012–2013 harvest season, a combination of factors led to the outbreak of a fungus, called Coffee Leaf Rust (CLR), that devastated many farms throughout Central America. The producers of the Cinco de Junio cooperative were hit hard, and saw both their yields and their quality plummet. We continued to support the cooperative, with all of the coffee we purchased going into year-round products such as Big Trouble, Forty Six, and Fast Forward. In addition, Cinco de Junio has initiated three projects funded through our Seeds grant program that have helped its members make upgrades on their farms and wet mills. Year after year, the co-op has done the best they can with the scant resources available to them, never losing sight of their desire to produce some of the highest quality, organically grown coffee in the country.
Beginning in the 2018-2019 harvest season, Cinco de Junio hired a talented cupper as a consultant to dive in and taste each members’ lots, providing individualized feedback to the producers and building larger lots depending on cup quality. This type of support proved to be a game-changer for the co-op and, during recent visits, we’ve tasted some of the best coffees from the group that we’ve seen since the CLR crisis hit. We are thrilled to see this persistence and hard work pay off, resulting in the return of a coffee that has historically been a staple of our single origin line-up.
