History and Heritage
It’s 1880, our great great grandparents travelled from Spain to New York to Nicaragua. Now standing on the peak of a volcanic mountain in a thick hot tiger filled jungle in the heart of Central America.
They look out at the vast 4653 acres they just purchased imagining to build one of the largest coffee estates in all of the Americas right before the first global coffee boom.
With their two sons and a massive crew they spent the next 5 years planting 1100 acres of high elevation premium coffee, supporting shade trees and infrastructure while also building their large estate still standing today.
By 1897 they signed a futures contract promising 9 secured years of the estates full coffee production with Ritter’s Chocolates in Germany. That was truly the beginning of the estate.
A large ship anchor still lies on the farm today, once taken up to this extremely high elevation by only horse and carriage from the ocean. A gift from our great great grandfather to his wife as a testament of their strength together, it is inscribed “you are my anchor”.
We share this because strong family unity and loyalty to long term relationships is a founding principal of our success and resilience over the years.
Deeply inspired by this immense legacy, 5 generations have powered forward against all odds over the last 139 years. We purposefully strive to build just as boldly and undeterred for the future life, spirit and glory of our ancestors vision that we hold until the next hands take it.
One of our grandfathers, an inheritor of the estate, the commercial business is named after ‘The Generals Cup’.
Still alive today at the age of 99, a military general who led the country through two civil wars against communism and with the particular actions of his wife miraculously protected the coffee estate.
Due to this particular grandfather ‘The General’ and his honorable services to the peoples of Nicaragua, our family holds a special National status of “National Historical Importance”.
The historical ownership of our estate was also awarded by the highest supreme courts of the Nation and acquired a “National Historical Protection of Ownership”.
Throughout our history, again and again coffee stood the test of time unlike any other commodity or product.
Surviving unfathomable hardships our sales of coffee is historically unscathed proving itself to be a stable powerhouse during periods of great economic and political strife, undefeated and unshakable we refer to coffee as our gold.
Naming the commercial business after ‘The Generals’ legacy
intended to honor him while still alive, also paying homage to the importance that he placed on discipline, tenacity, strict regimens of conduct, loyalty, morality and arming oneself with knowledge.
Above all the imperative importance of peace keeping with those we disagree with, avoiding war at all costs.
There was a particular impressive quality of dignified boldness and courage to push forward into the unknown in all aspects of life.
Naming the company after him was a personal declaration of the high standards we aim to uphold. The current owner, the grandson of the general, was entirely raised and trained by this grandfather and grandmother and thus felt particularly drawn to honor them.
They both take the first cup of coffee in the morning very seriously.
Thus the company name is The Generals Cup.
The Farming, Harvesting and Milling Of Our Coffee
Our multiple award winning coffee beans are harvested and dried in a very
different manner than most all on the market today acquiring a specialty category rating with the highest cupping scores beans can achieve.
The coffee ‘grapes’ are picked by hand once fully red. Unlike
Industrial farms that pick using machines collecting unripe with ripe.
These ‘wet sacks’ are spilled out onto large cloths in the sun to ‘cook’. The grapes are then wrapped up and sealed to bake in the heat and then spread out to air dry in the sun. This process is repeated multiple times a day over a period of many weeks until fully dried.
This long process allows the fruit flesh natural sweet honeys to soak into the inner beans and results in top ranking coffee by global standards. Washed industrial coffee rarely ranks in top categories.
Once dried the grapes are then milled without any water. Industrial farming uses massive water pools to wash the fruit flesh off the bean immediately after picking to get the beans to market as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Our beans are also certified “Strictly High Grown” increasing quality category by very high elevations. Finally Nicaraguan coffee is commonly known to be more rare and known generally to produce some of the highest quality natural coffee in the world.
The main estate is the heritage farm with pristine wild habitat and full infrastructure for coffee growth and mature coffee plants.
We have a very significant annual production and we are considered to have a very large production yield. The original milling infrastructure is still on the farm and operational today.
This farm is considered one of the last large non-industrial coffee farms left in all the Americas. We also employ all of the communities around us and are very involved in charities and donations in the area including the construction of an orphanage, a village as well as land donations.
This farm is located on the peak of a volcano known as Mombacho. It is a certified Heritage Estate, is a protected wildlife sanctuary, home to several endangered species including two birds thought to be previously extinct and was recently awarded “Model Coffee Farm of Nicaragua.”
Industrial coffee farms typically clear cut jungle and plant full sun rows of coffee to machine harvest.
We have fully integrated the coffee plants into the wildlife habitat and it increases our quality while protecting the soil and species involved. All of the watering is from clouds because of the elevation.
Thousands of the original shade trees planted in 1885 are mostly all standing massive and tall today some taller than mid-rise apartment buildings and more than 10' in diameter.
They are on their own very remarkable and we cherish and protect them as they are home to many exotic creatures and sub-vegetative species such as dragon fruits which grow on the trunks.
The volcanic soil is naturally very rich so we don’t require fertilizers nor do we use pesticides as the farm is fully organic and always has been.
Other significant plantations integrated into the coffee trees include limes, mandarins, avocados, mangoes, bananas, papayas, coca and a large fully certified mature teak plantation.
See all of our certifications on the about page and contact us directly if you are interested in produce or teak sales.
By becoming direct to market we can truly hold to a fully and totally natural process of production, use the collective wisdom over the 139 years of production and records keeping of our estate. Thus bring something of great specialty and value to the overly saturated, but very diluted, blended market.
This bold move into the direct market made us one of a kind in our industry. We cannot find another company like ours that spans from the production all the way to the roasted consumable product reliably delivered in the mass quantities that we are equipped irregardless of the quality category of which we rank very high.
If you would like more insight into why we roast and sell our own coffee production directly to the consumer market from our farm, please read our article “Farm to Cup: Why We Roast and Sell Our Own Coffee Production” here.
We thank you for your interest in our methods of farming and our history and we hope this gives you some general sense of who we are behind the scenes.
Thank you and God bless.
