Nueva Segovia (Las Segovias)

Nueva Segovia is where Nicaragua’s prize-winning coffee comes from. In the region known as Las Segovias, on the border with Honduras, farms around Dipilto and Mozonte grow about a seventh of the country’s coffee, high up, at 1,000–2,000 metres. In the 2026 Cup of Excellence they took almost every prize.

The short version

• Las Segovias, on the Honduran border, at about 1,000–2,000 m.
• About 14% of Nicaragua’s coffee.
• 24 of 29 places in the 2026 Cup of Excellence, including both winners.
• Dipilto and Mozonte, its most famous coffee towns.
• Geisha, Maragogype and Maracaturra among the prize-winners.

What does Nueva Segovia coffee taste like?

There is no official regional profile, but its competition coffees show the range. A 2015 Cup of Excellence lot from the Laguna No. 1 community in Dipilto, scoring 88.54, was described with notes of green apple, grape, apricot jam, rose, tropical fruit, chocolate and melon. AFP called Las Segovias the vanguard of Nicaragua’s quality coffee in 2019.

The Cup of Excellence

Nueva Segovia now dominates Nicaragua’s quality competition. In 2026, 24 of the 29 winning places went to its farms in Dipilto, Mozonte, San Fernando and Macuelizo:

Category	Winner	Place	Coffee	Score
Natural and honey	Los Alpes (Inversiones Valladarez Acevedo)	Dipilto	Geisha, natural	92.00
Washed	El Cambalache (Abner Samuel Zavala)	Dipilto	Geisha, washed	91.44
Natural, 2nd	San José de la Rosa (Taris Chenoa Acuña Jiménez)	Mozonte	Geisha, natural	90.06
Washed, 2nd	La Furiosa (Coffee Libre)	Mozonte	Ethiopia 74158, washed	89.38

Source: Alliance for Coffee Excellence, 2026.

At the auction, the top Los Alpes lot sold for US$140 a pound. The other winners included Maragogype, Maracaturra, Caturra, Catuaí, Parainema, Java and Pacamara coffees.

Dipilto

Dipilto sits right on the Honduran border. Its growers credit the place: “an excellent height, good fluvial precipitation, enough shade and a great variety of seeded coffee”, one told the Alliance for Coffee Excellence in 2006, adding that during the war of the 1980s his family could not work the farm because the zone was too dangerous, until 1990. Many farms run their own wet mills, picking only ripe cherries, pulping them the same day and fermenting them carefully, before the parchment goes to dry mills such as the Prodecoop cooperative’s, another winning cooperative explained.

How much coffee does it grow?

About 14% of Nicaragua’s coffee comes from Las Segovias, according to AFP in 2019 and the agriculture ministry’s 2005/06 report, which ranked Nueva Segovia the third-biggest coffee department, after Jinotega and Matagalpa, with Madriz fourth. More than 85% of Nicaragua’s arabica farms are in Jinotega, Matagalpa and Nueva Segovia, USDA says.

Nueva Segovia and other Nicaraguan origins

• Coffee in Nicaragua: the whole country, its exports and its history.
• Jinotega and Matagalpa: where most Nicaraguan coffee grows.
• Coffee in Honduras: the coffee country across the border.