Nicaraguan Yushi Coffee producing area introduces the story of Nicaraguan Yushi variety discovery

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How did Abyssinia in Ethiopia spread to Congo and even Nicaragua?

WCR's report surprised Miguel Meza because Miguel himself, or anyone he knew or raw bean merchants, had never heard of the Congo-produced Ethiopian (Abyssinia) variety, and if so, when was it introduced to the Congo? He began to study the problem.

The name of today's "Republic of the Congo" has been changed many times. in colonial times, it was once called "Belgium Congo". It was a colony of Belgium and spoke French as well as French colonies. Miguel found a French book, Plantations de Caf é au Congo Belge, published in Brussels in 1936, which recorded exactly the existence of coffee varieties from Abyssinia in Congo.

On page 86, the book logs on to the list of Arabica beans introduced into Belgium and Congo. The first line lists the introduction of mocha varieties from Abyssinia (the old name of Ethiopia). At that time, all Ethiopian beans were generally referred to as moka beans. In addition, bourbon was introduced from Brazil, elephant beans, pointed bourbon from Bourbon island, and so on.

As for how Nicaragua Yushi, an Ethiopian variety, was introduced into Nicaragua, it is still an unsolved mystery.

However, Miguel found another clue that in May 1958, a disease-resistant variety was sent from the Congo Botanical Garden in Belgium to USDA in the United States as a reference variety to be extended to Central American producing countries. The final serial number of this variety in Costa Rica is T.3872. It goes without saying that this coffee is likely to be closely related to Abyssinia in the Congo. In order to fight leaf rust, CATIE promoted many Ethiopian varieties to Central American countries, including Nicaragua. However, many are not released commercially and are only grown in laboratories or on a few farms.

Yersi of Nicaragua can be said to be the newly discovered Ethiopian variety! But the discovery was entirely accidental.

Expocamo, a Nicaraguan raw bean exporter, has begun to move to more remote areas in the past two years, hoping to find the next boutique coffee, and the San Juan de Rio Coco region is one of them. At the end of 2016, Expocamo visited the local Finca El Zapote farm and drank a cherry coffee that resembled Tibica beans and found that the flavor was very different from that of Nicaragua, like ripe papaya.

Miguel Angel, a farmer in Zapot, told them that the tree, called Yersi, had been around when his father bought the farm and was planted by the Paguaga family of former farmers 40-50 years ago. Because the flavor is so special, Expocamo requires it to be dealt with separately when it is harvested. A few months later, Nicaragua Yossi showed an eye-catching performance on the cup table that he had never seen before. Very similar to the flower scent of Yega Xuefei, with a cup test score of 87 points and a farm of only 1000 meters above sea level, it is almost impossible to have such an outstanding performance, unless Yushi is not a common local Central American variety such as Kaddura and Kaduai.

On the day of the cup test, Expocamo immediately went to the farm to ask about the origin of the coffee. After Miguel Angel's father died, he inherited the Zapot farmland, and like most coffee farmers nearby, he changed all the coffee on the farm to Kaddura, which had a high yield, but kept Youxi, on the grounds that although the harvest was low, it was highly resistant to disease.