Coffee Sketcher

Finca Elite

Properties3
descriptionThe small Mozonte farm in Nueva Segovia, Nicaragua, whose honey-processed Geisha scored 91.77 at the 2025 Nicaragua Cup of Excellence — the highest score of that competition — and which almost nothing else is published about.
tagsfarm, nicaragua, nueva-segovia, mozonte, cup-of-excellence, geisha, honey-process
aliasesElite, Finca Élite, Elite Mozonte

6 min read

Finca Elite

Finca Elite is a coffee farm in Mozonte, Nueva Segovia, Nicaragua, worked by Olman Uriel Sauceda Chávez. It appears on this wiki for a single result: its honey-processed Geisha scored 91.77 at the 2025 Nicaragua Cup of Excellence, winning the Natural & Honey category and posting the highest score of the entire competition — higher than the washed winner, higher than every other lot on the table.

It is also, unusually for a farm with a result like that, a farm about which essentially nothing is published. There is no website, no Alliance for Coffee Excellence farm-directory entry, and no primary source giving its altitude, its size, or when it was planted. What follows is what the auction tables record, and an honest account of what they don’t.

Story

Nicaragua’s Cup of Excellence judges in two separate categories — “Washed” and “Natural & Honey” — and runs one auction covering both. Elite won the Natural & Honey side in 2025 with a honey-processed Geisha: the cherry skin stripped off, the sticky fruit layer left on the bean to dry, which is the middle road between washed and natural.

The winning coffee was split into an A lot and a B lot, standard practice at these auctions so that two buyers can each take a share of the same top coffee rather than one bidder sweeping it.

What makes the result interesting is the price rather than the score. Elite’s 91.77 was the best coffee in the competition and sold at 56.10 a pound. The washed category’s winner, Abner Samuel Zavala’s La Esperanza, scored a point lower and sold for 66.00. A washed lot called Los Alpes took the auction’s top price at $88.20/lb without topping either category on score. Elite’s lots were the fourth and fifth most expensive of the thirty (ACE — Nicaragua 2025, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch).

The year after, Elite entered again and placed tenth in the same category at 87.94 — a reminder that a competition-winning farm is not a permanently competition-winning farm.

Notable lots / records

YearLotScorePriceAuction
2025Honey Geisha, 1A — 264.55 lb91.77**14,497.34)Cup of Excellence Nicaragua — 1st, Natural & Honey; bought by K.V.N. Import Export (1991) Co., Ltd.
2025Honey Geisha, 1B — 231.45 lb91.77**12,984.35)Cup of Excellence Nicaragua — same coffee, second lot; bought by Decameron Coffee
2026Honey Geisha — 396.83 lb87.94not published in the table consultedCup of Excellence Nicaragua — 10th, Natural & Honey

Both 2025 rows are from ACE’s own published auction table and are internally consistent — weight times price gives the published total in each case. The 2026 row is from ACE’s results table for that year, which publishes rank, score, variety, process, region and weight but no price or buyer.

To verify

The farm’s altitude is unconfirmed, and the two figures in circulation disagree. Roaster pages cited by the research behind this note gave 1,450–1,600 m (Novo Coffee) and 1,450–1,650 m (Good Karma Coffee) for Finca Elite. Both URLs returned HTTP 404 when checked on 2026-07-23, so neither could be confirmed, and ACE publishes no altitude for the farm. Roughly 1,450–1,650 m is the range the trade reports; treat it as a claim, not a measurement.

To verify

Nothing else about the land is documented. No farm size, no hectares under coffee, no tree count, no planting date for the Geisha, no ownership structure. The same dead roaster pages described Elite as a family-run farm in the Dipilto–Jalapa mountain range on which Sauceda “launched the Finca Elite project”, and said the farm also grows chiroso, orange gesha, sidra and pink bourbon — varieties fashionable at the top of the specialty market. None of that is confirmed, and no founding year should be quoted for the farm.

To verify

A separate farm, Finca Altiplano, is attributed to the same producer — near Dipilto, at 1,650–1,700 m, growing Caturra, Pacamara, Geisha, Java and Parainema. That comes from one now-offline roaster page and appears in no ACE record consulted here. Do not treat Altiplano and Elite as the same property, and do not treat Altiplano as documented.

To verify

Do not confuse this with the other Mozonte farms in this wiki. Mozonte is a small municipality that keeps appearing in these results: the Finca La Esperanza (Dipilto) note already flags a different Finca La Esperanza in Mozonte run by the Balladarez family, and ACE’s 2026 table lists Mozonte farms called La Furiosa and San José de la Rosa as well. Farm names in Nueva Segovia collide constantly — always carry the municipality and the producer’s name.

Sources

  1. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Nicaragua 2025 results and auction — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch)
  2. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Nicaragua 2026 results — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch; no price or buyer columns published)
  3. Alliance for Coffee Excellence — farm directory entry for 91.77 — accessed 2026-07-23 (HTTP 404 — no entry exists)
  4. Good Karma Coffee — Nicaragua Finca Elite, Gesha Honey, COE Winner 2025 — accessed 2026-07-23 (HTTP 404; source of the 1,450–1,650 m claim)
  5. Novo Coffee — Olman Sauceda Geshas — accessed 2026-07-23 (HTTP 404; source of the 1,450–1,600 m and variety claims)
  6. Novo Coffee — Altiplano — accessed 2026-07-23 (HTTP 404; source of the Finca Altiplano claims)

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