Finca Solidaridad
Solidaridad is a very small coffee farm in Matagalpa, Nicaragua, worked by José Ramón Jarquín Gómez. It is on this wiki for one reason: its washed Maracaturra took second place among the washed coffees at the 2025 Nicaragua Cup of Excellence, scored 90.50, and sold at auction for 35,755.86 (Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Nicaragua 2025, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch).
That price is unremarkable next to the numbers on Cup of Excellence records by country. What is remarkable is the farm: by the one description available, it is about four manzanas — a manzana is the standard Central American land unit of roughly 0.7 hectares, so somewhere near three hectares, or seven acres (Home Barista Shop Aarau, accessed 2026-07-23). Most farms in this wiki are fifty to several hundred hectares. This one is a garden by comparison, and it still cupped 90.50.
Story
What the official record says
The Alliance for Coffee Excellence results table for Nicaragua 2025 is the primary document, and it is short:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Farm | Solidaridad |
| Producer | Jose Ramon Jarquin |
| Region | Matagalpa |
| Category | Washed |
| Rank | 2 |
| Score | 90.50 |
| Variety | Maracaturra |
| Weight | 2,553.99 lb |
| Price | $14.00/lb |
| Total | $35,755.86 |
That is the whole official entry. ACE publishes no altitude, no farm size, no ownership history — the results table exists to record a competition, not to profile an estate. Everything below the table comes from roasters who bought the coffee, and is weaker evidence.
The competition was judged 5–9 May 2025 and auctioned 19 June 2025. Thirty lots sold 20,106.15 lb for 88.20/lb (Los Alpes, washed) and the bottom **14.00 sits near the low end of that spread.
The lot did not go to one buyer. Nine roasters bought it together as a Buying consortium — Dabov Specialty Coffee, Ryans Coffee, Roots by Earth, Savaya Coffee, Supremo Coffee, Mogipoground, Citric meets Malic, Mage Coffee and Smoky Shark Coffee (same source). At 2,554 lb the lot was simply too big for any one small roaster to get through, which is the usual reason consortia form at this end of a Cup of Excellence auction.
What the farm actually looks like
One European retailer that bought a share of the lot published the only farm description found anywhere. It says Solidaridad sits at 1,270 metres, grows several varieties across four manzanas, and that the grower works carefully on fertilisation and on picking. It also lists two competition results beyond the Cup of Excellence: third place in the regional “Mejor Café Departamental” (best departmental coffee) and second in the washed category of a “Taza de la Excelencia” competition (Home Barista Shop Aarau, accessed 2026-07-23). The same page names two bodies that support the farm and help it reach export buyers: COCOATRADEC and “the Solidaridad cooperative”.
1,270 metres is low for a coffee this good. Nicaraguan competition lots more often come from 1,300–1,600 m, and the Matagalpa farm Finca San José — a different farm entirely — is described at 1,300–1,400 m. A 90.50 at 1,270 m says the score came from variety choice and careful processing rather than from altitude.
Roasters describe the cup as apricot, hibiscus, mango, orange and maple syrup (same source). That is a fruit-forward profile for a washed coffee, which is characteristic of Maracaturra — a large-beaned Nicaraguan cross that is fussy to grow and low-yielding, and is grown almost entirely for cup quality.
Why the name is confusing
“Solidaridad” is a common name in Nicaraguan coffee, and it attaches to at least three different things in Matagalpa. Untangling them is most of the work of this note; see the callouts below.
Notable lots / records
| Year | Lot | Score | Price | Auction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Washed Maracaturra, 2,553.99 lb | 90.50 | **35,755.86) | Cup of Excellence Nicaragua — 2nd, washed category; bought by a nine-roaster Buying consortium |
| n.d. | not named | — | — | “Mejor Café Departamental” (regional) — 3rd place |
| n.d. | washed | — | — | “Taza de la Excelencia” — 2nd, washed category |
The first row is from the official ACE results table. The two rows below it come from a single retailer page with no year attached, and should be treated as claims rather than record — see the callout below.
To verify
Farm, or cooperative? The ACE results table lists the farm as “Solidaridad” (ACE — Nicaragua 2025, confirmed via WebFetch). But ACE’s own auction lot page for the same coffee appears to be titled “Cooperativa Solidaridad” — cooperative, not farm — and gives the location as “Matagalpa, Matagalpa” (page found in search listings; direct fetch returned HTTP 403, so this rests on the search snippet, not on the page itself). Separately, the Home Barista Shop description calls the grower’s land “José Ramón Jarquín Gómez’s farm” and names “the Solidaridad cooperative” as an outside body that supports him. Those two readings are not the same: either Solidaridad is the name of his farm, or it is the name of the cooperative he sells through and the lot was entered under the co-op’s name. This wiki uses “Finca Solidaridad” as the title because that is how the lot is commonly referred to, but do not assert that the farm itself is named Solidaridad.
Not the Solidaridad NGO project. The international NGO Solidaridad runs a Plan Vivo–certified agroforestry project for smallholder coffee farmers in Matagalpa and Jinotega — established 2017, first trees planted on 160 hectares in 2018, grown to about 2,500 hectares, reportedly involving over 1,700 smallholders (Nicaragua Solidaridad Acorn project design document, accessed 2026-07-23). That is a different entity from this farm, and an automated research pass on “Finca Solidaridad, Matagalpa” returned the NGO project instead of the farm. Whether Jarquín’s farm or his cooperative has any connection to that project is unknown — no source links them, and the name match alone proves nothing.
Altitude, farm size and the extra competition placings all rest on a single retailer page (Home Barista Shop Aarau, accessed 2026-07-23) and are not in any primary document. The 1,270 m altitude in particular is unusually low for a 90.50-point lot and deserves a second source. Two other pages that would likely carry the same detail — the ACE auction lot page and the Supremo Coffee product page — blocked our fetch (HTTP 403 and 429).
COCOATRADEC is named as a supporting body with no explanation of what it is. It is presumably a Nicaraguan cooperative or producer association, but nothing was found to confirm the full name or the nature of the relationship. Do not expand the acronym without a source.
The producer’s full name. Two European retailers give José Ramón Jarquín Gómez; ACE records “Jose Ramon Jarquin” unaccented and without the second surname; the one news story about him calls him Ramón Jarquín. The longer form is more likely correct as a legal name — Spanish naming convention carries both surnames — but no primary document confirms it. See Ramón Jarquín.
Related
- Ramón Jarquín — the producer, and the fuller story of what the $14/lb meant to him
- Cup of Excellence · Alliance for Coffee Excellence — the competition and the organization that publishes the results
- Cup of Excellence records by country — where Nicaragua’s 2025 numbers sit against everyone else’s
- Buying consortium — the nine-roaster group that bought this lot, and why groups form at both ends of the price range
- Maracaturra — the variety
- Coffee scoring · Cupping — what 90.50 means and how it is arrived at
- Premiumisation — why an auction price and a farmgate price are such different numbers
Official links
- (no official website found — Solidaridad is a smallholding of roughly three hectares with no site, social account or exporter page of its own; it reaches buyers through a cooperative and through the Cup of Excellence auction)
- Official results — Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Nicaragua 2025 — the primary record of the farm’s placement, lot and price
Sources
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Nicaragua 2025 results and auction — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch)
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence auction — “Cooperativa Solidaridad” lot page — accessed 2026-07-23 (fetch blocked, HTTP 403; cited from search listing only)
- Nicaragua Solidaridad — Acorn project design document (Plan Vivo) — accessed 2026-07-23 (the NGO project, a different entity)
- Home Barista Shop Aarau — Solidaridad CoE 2. Platz Nicaragua — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch)
- Supremo Coffee — Solidaridad, Cup of Excellence — accessed 2026-07-23 (fetch rate-limited, HTTP 429; cited from search listing only)
- Every Coffee — OMA Coffee Roaster, Nicaragua Solidaridad Maracaturra Washed COE — accessed 2026-07-23 (fetch blocked, HTTP 403; cited from search listing only)
- Ozone Coffee — Finca San José, Matagalpa, Nicaragua — accessed 2026-07-23 (a different Matagalpa farm, cited only for regional altitude context)