We first tasted coffee from Cinco de Junio in 2009, when a graduate student working with the Fabretto Children’s Foundation sent us an unexpectedly delicious sample from one of the producers in the co-op. That producer's coffee would go on to take second place in the 2010 Cup of Excellence Nicaragua! We visited Las Sabanas for the first time in October of that year and have worked closely with the leadership of Cinco de Junio ever since.
During the 2012–2013 harvest season, a combination of factors led to the outbreak of a fungus called Coffee Leaf Rust (CLR), which devastated farms throughout Central America. The producers of the Cinco de Junio cooperative were hit hard, affecting their yields and quality. 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 initiated multiple projects funded by our Seeds grant program to help its members upgrade their farms and wet mills. Year after year, the co-op has maximized 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.
Since the 2018–2019 harvest season, Cinco de Junio has employed a talented cupper to taste members' coffee deliveries. This allows the co-op to combine deliveries into larger lots depending on cup quality and provide individualized feedback to each member. This type of support has been a game changer for the co-op. In recent years, we’ve tasted some of the best coffees from the group since the CLR crisis hit. We're thrilled to see their persistence and hard work pay off, resulting in the return of a coffee that has historically been a staple of our Single-Origin lineup.
