The Alliance for Coffee Excellence (ACE) in partnership with Fincas Mierisch has announced, after a five-year hiatus, the return of the Los Favoritos ACE Private Collection Auction in 2021.
After a socio-political crisis in Nicaragua and the global COVID-19 pandemic, the team has made the decision to re-launch Los Favoritos for 2021 to share their greatest hits with the globe. The auction, scheduled for 18 May, will showcase the crème of the crop, or Greatest Hits, from the Fincas Mierisch.
Covid 19 has been a double-edged sword for Fincas Mierisch, which replaced time they’d normally spend hosting visitors in origin with organising the Los Favoritos auction.
“Every year our existing clients, and some new clients, ask us whether Los Favoritos was going to take place. Even our own team would always ask us at the beginning of every harvest if Los Favoritos was taking place that year. The demand we’ve received over the past five years has been overwhelming. This support and interest final reached its peak last year during the pandemic, surprisingly, so we could no longer keep the public waiting,” says Farm Director Eleane Mierisch, whose family has been farming coffee on the mountains of Matagalpa and Jinotega in Nicaragua since 1908.
Born in 2013, Los Favoritos auction has been an initiative to show the world the exquisiteness and allure of coffees produced by Fincas Mierisch and Nicaragua, as an origin, in general. A lot has changed since then, however. The 2021 auction will include coffees using fermentation techniques that the team has recently started applying to its coffees. The group has also shifted its focus to a “small lots, big flavors” motto, capping the size of the auction lots to a maximum of 138 kilograms (or four 34.5-kilogram boxes per lot). There is also a minimum cup score of 88 points to enter the auction.
“The pandemic also caused a shift in many producers to move away from quality and instead focus on volume. We want to be examples that specialty coffee is economically sustainable for producers. But to also highlight that we focus on specialty coffee because it is our passion. Life is too short to not be doing what you love. And we love specialty coffee,” says Mierisch.
ACE Global Coffee Centers are now evaluating the coffees to determine the greatest hits for the auction. Due to limited supply, ACE encourages roasters to register for a sample set in advance.
For more information, visit allianceforcoffeeexcellence.org/product/los-favoritos-2021-sample-set
