Sergio Noé Ortez Ortez
Sergio Noé Ortez Ortez is a coffee producer in Nueva Segovia, the department on Nicaragua’s Honduran border that supplies most of the country’s competition coffee. He farms El Porvenir and Casa Blanca, and he is on this wiki for something rarer than a single trophy: he keeps coming back.
| Year | Farm | Category / rank | Score | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | Casa Blanca | 10th | 88.13 | $7.92/lb |
| 2024 | El Porvenir | 6th | 89.35 | $20.10/lb |
| 2025 | El Porvenir | 2nd, Natural & Honey | 90.59 | $20.30/lb |
| 2026 | El Porvenir | 12th, Natural & Honey | 87.72 | not published |
Every row is from the Alliance for Coffee Excellence’s own published records for the Nicaraguan Cup of Excellence (all accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch; sources listed at the foot of this note). Four placings, fourteen years apart end to end, and the score climbing most of the way. That is a different kind of achievement from one spectacular season — it is the sign of a producer who has worked out a method and can repeat it.
The other thread running through all four rows is the buyer. Every one of his auction lots on record was bought by a Japanese company: Kyokuto Fadie in 2012, Wataru & Co. in 2024, Shrub Coffee in 2025. See Japan coffee market for why Japanese green buyers are so heavily represented at the top of Central American auctions.
Story
Who he is
Ortez was born on 1 January 1974 in the village of San Fernando in northern Nicaragua, and lives in Totogalpa, near the departmental capital Ocotal, with his wife and four children. His house doubles as his dry mill — the shed where parchment coffee is hulled and graded after drying, the last step before it is bagged for export. He is described as serious, meticulous and rather shy, a churchgoing Catholic who does not drink.
All of that comes from a single producer profile published by Shrub Coffee, the Japanese importer that bought his 2025 winning lot (Shrub Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch). It is a trade partner’s account rather than a neutral record, but it is first-hand and based on visits, and the parts of it that can be checked against ACE’s paperwork hold up.
The farms
He runs three properties, all in Nueva Segovia:
| Farm | How he got it | Where | Varieties |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Porvenir | bought by his father in 1978 | about 20 km north-east of Ocotal, in the municipality of San Fernando | Javanica, Pacamara, Caturra |
| Casa Blanca | bought by his father in 1986; Sergio inherited it in 2007 | Dipilto–Los Planes | Pacamara, Caturra |
| Embajada (“embassy”) | he bought it himself in 2010 | deep in the mountains past Mozonte, an hour over rough road | Red and Yellow Catuaí, experimental Geisha |
The farm list, the purchase years and the varieties are Shrub’s (same source). The 1986 purchase and the 2007 inheritance of Casa Blanca are independently confirmed by ACE’s own 2012 farm-directory entry, which records Sergio as the fourth generation on that land (ACE farm directory — 88.13, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch).
Which farm is “the main one” has moved over time. Casa Blanca is the bigger, higher, better-equipped property — it carries the wet mill, the machinery that strips the fruit off freshly picked cherries — and it is what he entered in 2012. Since 2024 everything he has placed with has come off El Porvenir, the older and rougher farm.
2012 — Casa Blanca, and a $7.92 coffee
His first record is the 2012 Nicaragua Cup of Excellence, and it is a useful photograph of what a strong Nicaraguan farm looked like before the current price era. Everything in this table is from ACE’s farm-directory entry (same source as above):
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Farm | Casa Blanca |
| City | Dipilto–Los Planes, Nueva Segovia |
| Altitude | 1,300 m (farm spans 1,100–1,500 m) |
| Farm size | 63.6 ha, of which 41.93 ha in coffee |
| Rainfall | 1,600–2,000 mm a year |
| Variety | Pacamara |
| Processing | Washed, sun-dried |
| Rank | 10 |
| Score | 88.13 |
| Lot | 2,380.99 lb (36 boxes of 30 kg) |
| Price | **18,857.44 total |
| Buyer | Kyokuto Fadie Corporation (Japan) |
Two details in that entry are worth pulling out. The jury’s notes read “jasmine, chocolate, black cherry, spice” on the nose and “ripe fruits, pineapple, peach, black tea, passion fruit” in the cup — a properly high-scoring Pacamara. And the description of how the farm works names a quality-control routine he calls “7 Times Classified”: the coffee is sorted seven separate times before he considers it finished. That is unusually specific for a farm write-up, and it turns up again, thirteen years later, in an unrelated Japanese roaster’s account of visiting him — which is as close to independent confirmation as a working practice on a small farm ever gets (see the El Porvenir note for the second account).
2024–2026 — El Porvenir, and the climb
Then a twelve-year gap in the published record, and a return with the other farm.
| Year | Category | Rank | Score | Variety | Process | Weight | Price | Total | Buyer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | — | 6 | 89.35 | Pacamara | washed (lavado) | 253.45 kg (≈559 lb) | $20.10/lb | $11,230.88 | Wataru & Co., Ltd. (Japan) |
| 2025 | Natural & Honey | 2 | 90.59 | Pacamara | natural | 1,036 lb | $20.30/lb | $21,030.80 | Shrub Coffee by Marukai (Japan) |
| 2026 | Natural & Honey | 12 | 87.72 | Pacamara Amarillo | natural | 1,124.36 lb | not published | — | — |
From ACE — Nicaragua 2024, Nicaragua 2025 and Nicaragua 2026, all accessed 2026-07-23 and confirmed via WebFetch. The 2026 table as published carries no price or buyer columns.
Three things stand out.
He switched process and it worked. In 2012 and 2024 he entered washed coffee — fruit scrubbed off before drying, the classic Central American style. In 2025 he entered a natural, where the cherry is dried whole with the fruit still on, and jumped from 89.35 to 90.59 and second place in the category. Nicaragua’s competition splits into a Washed table and a Natural & Honey table and crowns a winner in each; he took the runner-up spot on the natural side.
The lot got four times bigger. 559 lb in 2024, 1,036 lb in 2025, 1,124 lb in 2026. Competition lots are usually tiny — a few hundred pounds — because a farm can only assemble so much fruit of that standard. Tripling the volume while raising the score is the harder trick, and it is what makes the difference between a lucky micro-lot and a farm that can actually supply a buyer.
The price barely moved. 20.30 in 2025 — for a coffee that scored 1.24 points higher and placed second instead of sixth. In the same 2025 auction, Abner Samuel Zavala’s washed Geisha took 66.00 a pound at 90.73, and the top lot of the competition made $88.20/lb. Ortez scored within 0.14 of a point of Zavala and was paid less than a third as much. The variable is not quality; it is the name of the variety and the story around it. Premiumisation is the note that explains why bidders behave that way, and Olman Uriel Sauceda Chávez is the other producer in the very same auction who ran into it.
2026 was a step back — twelfth at 87.72, with a Pacamara Amarillo, the yellow-cherry form of the variety. As the Sauceda note puts it, a drop like that is the ordinary weather of competition coffee: scores move with rain, picking dates, fermentation luck and a different jury.
The cupper
Japanese roasters who have worked with him describe him as a serious cupper in his own right — a trained taster who travels to specialty-coffee events in consuming countries rather than a grower who leaves the tasting to buyers (Kariomons Coffee, accessed 2026-07-23, cited via the research report only). That is a single trade source and no formal credential was found; see the callout below.
Why he matters
Most producers reach this wiki through one enormous result. Ortez reaches it through four ordinary-to-very-good ones spread over fourteen years, and that makes him the better illustration of what a working competition farm actually looks like: a family property bought in the 1970s and 80s, a sorting routine repeated seven times a batch, a slow shift from washed to natural, lots that grow rather than sparkle, and a price that stubbornly refuses to follow the score because he grows Pacamara and not Geisha.
He is also a reminder of how concentrated the buying is. Four recorded auction lots, four Japanese buyers, no American or European name anywhere in his record.
To verify
There are at least four different Nicaraguan farms called “El Porvenir”, and one of them is in his own municipality. “El Porvenir” means “the future” and is among the commonest farm names in Nicaragua. ACE’s 2024 and 2025 results tables alone contain El Porvenir entries from four separate farmers — Ortez, Martha Margarita Marin Rodriguez, Pedro Monzon Castilblanco and Claudia Maria Rivera Siles — in both Nueva Segovia and Jinotega. Separately, Nicaragua’s environment ministry describes a Finca El Porvenir in San Fernando, Nueva Segovia owned by Donaldo Cuadra (MARENA, accessed 2026-07-23, cited via the research report only). Do not attach any of their data to Ortez. Full detail in the Finca El Porvenir (San Fernando) note.
To verify
Almost everything personal about him rests on one importer’s page. The birth date, birthplace, household, the dry mill at his house, the three-farm list and every purchase year come from Shrub Coffee’s producer profile (shrubcoffee.com/nicaragua, accessed 2026-07-23, confirmed via WebFetch) — a company that buys his coffee. The 1986 Casa Blanca purchase is corroborated by ACE; the rest is not. It is plausible and first-hand, but it is one commercially interested source. State it as “his importer reports”, not as fact.
To verify
The “cupper” claim and the group name “Cafe de Ortez” are single-sourced. That he is a travelling professional taster comes from Kariomons Coffee; that his farms trade collectively as カフェ・デ・オルテス — rendered in the research report as both “Cafe de Ortez” and “Cafe de Ortiz” — comes from one Japanese coffee blog (Coffee Fanatics), both accessed 2026-07-23 and cited via the research report only, neither confirmed at the source. No Q Grader or Coffee Quality Institute registry entry was found for him, and no company registration for any such brand. Do not treat “Cafe de Ortez” as a verified business name.
To verify
The 2024 weight column is in kilograms, not pounds. ACE’s 2024 Nicaragua table gives his lot as 253.45, while the 2025 and 2026 tables give 1,036 and 1,124.36 for comparable-or-larger lots. The arithmetic settles it: 253.45 kg is 558.75 lb, and 558.75 × 11,230.88**, exactly the total ACE publishes. The unit changes between years — check it before comparing lot sizes across ACE tables.
To verify
No ACE farm-directory entry exists for his El Porvenir lots. For 2012 there is a full directory page in his own words. For 2024–2026 there is nothing: the directory URL matching his 2024 score of 89.35 resolves to an unrelated Brazilian farm (Fazenda Santo Antônio, Minas Gerais, Brazil Pulped Naturals 2005 — checked 2026-07-23 via WebFetch). ACE’s directory is keyed on score, so scores collide across countries and decades. A directory page is only about the farm you think it is if the farmer’s name on it matches.
Related
- Finca El Porvenir (San Fernando) — the farm behind his 2024, 2025 and 2026 results, and the name-collision warning that goes with it
- Pacamara — the variety behind every single one of his placings
- Caturra · Catuaí · Geisha — the rest of what his three farms grow
- Cup of Excellence · Alliance for Coffee Excellence — the competition and the body that publishes every number above
- Cup of Excellence records by country — where Nicaragua’s prices sit against everyone else’s
- Olman Uriel Sauceda Chávez · Finca Elite — the producer who won the Natural & Honey category he came second in
- Abner Samuel Zavala · Finca La Esperanza (Dipilto) · Finca El Cambalache — the other repeat-placing Nueva Segovia family, and the Geisha that outsold him three to one
- Ramón Jarquín · Finca Solidaridad — the Matagalpa smallholder at the ordinary end of the same auctions
- Natural process · Washed process · Honey process — the processing switch that moved his score
- Dry milling — what the mill at his house actually does
- Japan coffee market — why every buyer in his record is Japanese
- Premiumisation — why 90.59 paid 66.00
- Coffee scoring · Cupping · Q Grader — what those scores mean and what a professional taster’s job is
Official links
- (no official website found — Ortez is a family producer with no farm site, company page or social account traced to him; he reaches buyers through the Cup of Excellence auction and through Japanese importers)
- Official record — Alliance for Coffee Excellence farm directory, Casa Blanca 2012 (88.13) — the only primary description of his land in his own words
- Official results — Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Nicaragua 2024
- Official results — Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Nicaragua 2025
- Official results — Alliance for Coffee Excellence, Nicaragua 2026
Sources
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence — farm directory entry 88.13, Casa Blanca, Nicaragua 2012 — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch)
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Nicaragua 2024 results and auction — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch)
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Nicaragua 2025 results and auction — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch, twice: once for the results and once to separate the four farmers named on “El Porvenir” rows)
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence — Nicaragua 2026 results — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch; no price or buyer columns published)
- Shrub Coffee — Nicaragua / Sergio Noe Ortez producer profile — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch; the importer that bought his 2025 lot, and the only source for his biography)
- Alliance for Coffee Excellence — farm directory entry 89.35 — accessed 2026-07-23 (confirmed via WebFetch; resolves to an unrelated Brazilian farm, listed so the collision is not rediscovered)
- Kariomons Coffee — エル・ポルベニール farm page — accessed 2026-07-23 (cited via the research report only; source of the “cupper” claim)
- Coffee Fanatics (JP) — テロワール編・ニカラグアの章 — accessed 2026-07-23 (cited via the research report only; source of the “Cafe de Ortez” group name and the Embajada/Mozonte listing)
- MARENA (Nicaragua) — MARENA promueve prácticas sostenibles en cafetales de Nueva Segovia — accessed 2026-07-23 (cited via the research report only; describes a different Finca El Porvenir, owned by Donaldo Cuadra)