Our transition away from sourcing Costa Rican coffees for our blends was not an easy decision; as we laid out in our previous blog post, much of our love for specialty coffee was born from both incredible coffees that we tasted and wonderful experiences we met in the beautiful nation of Costa Rica.
Nonetheless, the decision was made much easier when we met the good people and tasted the outstanding coffee from Finca Mirasol in Nicaragua. Dan Tillis, a regular customer at Snowy Owl in Sandwich, dropped off samples of a coffee Luis Toruño and his team were producing in La Dalia, Matagalpa, the highlands of Nicaragua, on a special farm called Finca Mirasol. Receiving samples from farms is common practice in our industry, and it’s safe to say that the vast majority of coffees we sample roast and taste are coffees that we do not end up purchasing. Afterall, we have limits to the products we offer and the amount of coffee we sell. But as soon as Gracie Lance, our Green Coffee Buyer, tasted the coffee from Finca Mirasol, sparks flew! She realized quickly that she had to speak with Tillis, Toruño, and his team to learn more about the coffee, the volume they could offer, and the potential to incorporate this coffee into Snowy Owl’s product mix. The quality of the coffee from Finca Mirasol was too good to pass up.
The Importance of our Blend Components
We take pride in showcasing rare coffees from various regions around the world, but the vast majority of the coffee that we purchase is used to make our most popular coffee: the signature blends, Jaws, Captain Crosby, and Brewster. While the African component of the coffee has varied through the years, we have always sourced the remaining two components from Costa Rica and Colombia. About 63% of the coffee we purchase in a year is used to make these signature blends, and we see the relationships that bring us these components as crucial to the success and sustainability of our business.
We have always worked closely with trusted partners, such as Ally Coffee who have on the ground operations in Costa Rica and who have been able to secure large volumes of coffee that we can use in our blends. However, as previously discussed, the changing market dynamics in Costa Rica have forced us to contract smaller and smaller batches of coffee, at higher prices. When we are constantly rotating coffees, our quality control measures of sampling various roast profiles and sampling blend combinations - with the goal of always offering a blend with the same flavor profiles - can become cumbersome and expensive. Ideally, when securing our blend components, we are securing a large volume of the same high-quality coffee, which allows for that consistency.
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Finca Mirasol - a Wonderful Solution
Finca Mirasol, a coffee farm located at an elevation of 1250 meters above sea level, is nestled between Jinotega and Matagalpa in Nicaragua. With a rich history spanning 80 years, Finca Mirasol has been known for cultivating exceptional, shade-grown specialty coffee. As the dialogue continued between Snowy Owl Coffee, Luis Toruño, and Dan Tillis we soon learned that Finca Mirasol’s annual yield would be able to provide us with enough coffee to last us for a year. In addition, the attention to quality, the transparency, and fair payment to growers perfectly aligned with our mission of helping to sustain coffee growing communities. The opportunity to become a long-term partner with this direct relationship was too tempting not to pursue. The one thing we needed was an importer: someone who could quite literally coordinate the logistics of getting the coffee from port in Nicaragua to the US, store the coffee in a large warehouse and release the coffee to Snowy Owl Coffee as needed
Enter Algrano. We were introduced to Algrano several years ago now, when they were a budding business like ourselves. We were immediately attracted to their mission of reducing the information asymmetry between small roasters and small growers while facilitating these relationships. Importers play such a huge and important role in the coffee industry, and Algrano both fills that role while also fostering direct communication between roasters and growers.
Algrano agreed to facilitate the logistics of this arrangement: the decision to bring in Finca Mirasol was happening!
It’s Here, and it’s in Your Cup
We officially started selling our blends with Finca Mirasol in late September, so if you haven’t noticed a change in your flavors, then we have done our job well. Afterall, blends are supposed to offer consistency in flavor, even when the inputs change.
As we have been working with this coffee and roasting many batches, we continue to be so impressed at the quality, consistency, and ease with which Finca Mirasol has fit into our systems. The quality of this crop is second to none, and we feel like we won the lottery in securing what we hope is a very long relationship with Toruño and his team.
We wanted to give the last word to Luis Toruño, who belongs to the family that has resurrected this beautiful coffee farm and converted the crops to specialty coffee with the hopes that long-term predictable partners like Snowy Owl would help them weather future market fluctuations and provide stability to those harvesting the coffee….
“We are proud to be fourth-generation coffee growers from La Dalia, Matagalpa, a legacy that began with my great-great-grandfather, the founder of our community. In those early days, the land was untouched, covered in virgin forests. Finca Mirasol has been carefully passed down through the generations, reaching my grandmother, Irma Molina de Montes, who, alongside my grandfather, planted the first coffee crops. When my grandfather passed away at a young age, my grandmother took on the immense challenge of running the farm, raising her children while nurturing the land, ensuring its growth and survival. She was lovingly known by the community as the queen of La Dalia.
In 2012, however, the international coffee crisis struck us hard. Plummeting prices made it impossible to sustain production, and we lost all our coffee plantations, unable to meet our financial obligations. But after my grandmother’s passing, my uncle and I made the decision to reclaim our family’s legacy. Together, we replanted coffee and began anew, giving birth to Finca Mirasol and Mutual Coffee.
Mutual Coffee was born from a deep need to protect and revive our heritage as coffee producers, honoring the sacrifices and hard work of our grandparents. We’ve reimagined our approach to coffee cultivation by fostering mutually beneficial partnerships—hence our name. Our commitment is rooted in transparency, fairness, and, above all, sustainability.
Our journey toward sustainability started with creating a foundation of financial stability. Our primary goal was to cultivate coffee that remains consistent over time, maintaining both quality and volume. Through improved farming and post-harvest practices, we’ve crafted a coffee that not only tastes exceptional but stands the test of time.
We are determined not to lose our legacy again. Only through sustainable, equitable relationships with our clients can we secure this future, which is why our partnership with Snowy Owl feels so natural. We are confident that this collaboration will bring us the lasting sustainability we've long strived for.”
- Luis Toruño
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