Jinotega and Matagalpa

Jinotega and Matagalpa are the heart of Nicaraguan coffee. These two north-central departments grow about 78% of the country’s crop, Jinotega more than any other, and have done since American, British and German planters arrived in the 1870s. Their best coffees have set Nicaraguan auction records.

The short version

• About 78% of Nicaragua’s coffee.
• Jinotega is the biggest coffee department; Matagalpa is second.
• Planted by foreign investors drawn by an 1877 subsidy.
• A record auction price of US$4,030 a quintal for a Jinotega coffee in 2017.
• Short of pickers, as Nicaraguans emigrate.

What does Jinotega and Matagalpa coffee taste like?

There is no official regional profile. At one Jinotega farm, Los Papales, at 1,300 metres, the manager told AFP in 2019 that its coffee scored 90 points for “exotic” flavours of pineapple, flowers and citrus. In the 2026 Cup of Excellence, washed Maragogype coffees from Jinotega and San Rafael del Norte and a Maracaturra from a Matagalpa cooperative were among the winners, scoring 87.00–87.39.

How much coffee do they grow?

Most of Nicaragua’s. The two departments grew 78% of the crop, AFP reported in 2019; the agriculture ministry’s 2005/06 report gave 78.4% for the region, with Jinotega the biggest coffee department and Matagalpa second. More than 85% of Nicaragua’s arabica farms are in Jinotega, Matagalpa and Nueva Segovia, at 365–1,500 metres, USDA says. No newer breakdown by department is published online.

A planter’s history

Coffee came to the north late. Nicaragua’s first coffee grew in the hills near Managua from 1845, but in 1877 the government of Pedro Joaquín Chamorro began paying 5 cents a tree to planters of more than 5,000 trees in the north, according to a history held by the Biblioteca Enrique Bolaños. The result was a wave of American, British and German money into Matagalpa and Jinotega, through firms such as the Matagalpa Coffee Company. The first plantation in Matagalpa was made by a German, Guillermo Gerecha, on his hacienda Las Lajas, and the Bavarian-born Alberto Vogl founded the hacienda Bavaria, whose plantations were among the best.

Record prices

In 2017, a lot from Ignacio Estrada Burgos’s farm El Esfuerzo, in Jinotega, sold at the Cup of Excellence auction for US$4,030 a quintal (45.45 kg); a second lot from the same farm fetched US$3,790, and Las Delicias, also in Jinotega, placed third. The 25 lots averaged US$1,102 a quintal, the speciality coffee association ACEN said.

Harvest and labour

The harvest is in full swing around the end of the year and Nicaragua formally closed the 2025-26 harvest in March 2026. Finding pickers is the problem: with hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans gone abroad, farms in 2025 offered up to 120 córdobas a can of picked coffee plus food and lodging, and some Jinotega growers expected to lose up to 40% of their crop, Agrolatam reported. The government runs coffee schools in Jinotega, La Dalia and Matagalpa.

Jinotega and Matagalpa and other Nicaraguan origins

• Coffee in Nicaragua: the whole country, its exports and its history.
• Nueva Segovia: the prize-winning farms of Las Segovias.
• Coffee in Honduras: the neighbour to the north.