Nicaragua: La Huella, Striped Orange Bourbon

Tasting notes

In the roaster’s words

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 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 following 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 family's Nicaraguan coffee farms are spread across the Jinotega and Matagalpa regions in the northwest of the country. They’re dotted on either side of the mountain range that forms the border between the two departments. La Huella sits on the Matagalpa side, to the south. When Roland travels to visit the farms, he’ll generally see La Huella on the same day as Limoncillo and Mama Mina, as they are close to one another. The journey typically starts at Mama Mina, continues through La Huella (with a stop for fresh tortillas at the wet mill along the way), before heading on to Limoncillo, the largest of the three farms. Planted in 2014 in the misty hills of El Arenal, La Huella is one of the newest additions to our long relationship with the Mierisch family. La Huella mostly grows Java and Red Catuai, with fewer shade trees than many other Mierisch farms. This is due to the overcast microclimate created by the local geography. Foggy clouds linger over the farm for much of the day, effectively doing the same job that shade trees would elsewhere. While most coffee farms need to add canopy cover, La Huella must deliberately keep it sparse or the coffee plants simply don't receive enough light to thrive. The farm also grows a small collection of exotic coffee varietals, including this Striped Orange Bourbon . People The very first Mierisch farm 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, including a gold mine and a farm he na

Notes

La Huella farm; experimentally separated striped cherries from Orange Bourbon harvest; 2026 washed Striped Orange Bourbon coffee.