Monmouth College + DoubleShot Coffee + El Chele

I met Norman Torres in Nicaragua while I was visiting the Nueva Segovia region of the country in 2023. I bought land in the central Matagalpa region a couple years prior, where my friend Luis was helping me manage a new coffee farm where we’d planted 580 baby coffee trees. While I waited for the plants to mature and bear their first crop, I made friends with a few young coffee producers who were taking over for their aging parents, and aspiring to develop direct relationships with specialty roasters like myself.

Norman is the youngest of the bunch and often the butt of everyone’s joke. His farm is in the Jinotega region, tucked in between Matagalpa and Nueva Segovia. Norman is relatively fair-skinned, so they call him “Chele,” and that’s the name of his farm: El Chele.

To be the odd man out, like Norman, is familiar to me. I never really fit in. And maybe none of us felt like we did when we were in school. I played football, but maybe I took it too seriously for a Division 3 Defensive End in the Midwest Conference. So I adopted a strange one man wolfpack mentality, me against the world. I didn’t party in college. I didn’t even drink. I didn’t join a fraternity, and eventually moved off campus out of the social embrace of the dorms. I earned an accounting degree, and I didn’t fit in there either, being the only football player in the department. I studied and I worked, and eventually I moved back home to Galesburg to commute and save money I didn’t have. So I get it.

But I had a professor who reached out and lent me a hand. I’d just enrolled in accounting 101 and I didn’t understand it, debits and credits be damned. I struggled through class trying to make sense of income statements and balance sheets, overly institutional account names, assets and expenses, liabilities and the like. I was up studying for a test the next day, and I called my mother, who had been a bookkeeper most of my life. She explained the basics of accounting to me over the phone in the simplest of terms, and a lightbulb came on. I’d overcomplicated matters in my head, but once I got it, things just made sense. After the test, everyone got their papers back except me, and I thought I must’ve done something terribly wrong. The professor asked to see me in her office after class. I sat down and she told me I needed to change my major to accounting. I’d just figured it out the night before the test, so I wasn’t so sure. But this professor invested in me. She made me feel like I was smart instead of just strange. She guided me through the rest of my academics and groomed me to become a partner at a big accounting firm.

Turns out that’s not what happened, but it gave me new confidence and set me on a trajectory to try and make a difference in the world. That’s what I’m doing today, even if it’s in a small way.

So when I met Norman, I could see the inexperience in his countenance and the desire for excellence in his spirit. His English was shaky, and my Spanish shakier. But he only lacked confidence, understandably. I tasted his coffees alongside those of his peers. And Chele brought the goods. Just like my foray into accounting, he didn’t know what he was doing, but he tried and did his best, and it showed on the cupping table. He didn’t have the benefit of an experienced parent to guide him. But I’ve tried to show him the value of his work, and my friend Luis has taken a hand in encouraging Norman’s post-harvest decisions.

Norman continues to strive to do better. And I continue to foster a relationship with him. I respect the hell out of a guy who is as awkward as I am that tries as hard as I do. And that’s what this is all about.

His coffee is a very small production lot*. I feel that it exemplifies the spirit of our liberal arts education at an institution in the heart of Illinois farm country. Drinking this coffee, you can be sure you’re directly supporting the work of an earnest coffee farmer. And because Monmouth College has contributed so much to the foundation of my ethic and thirst for knowledge, we’re taking this opportunity to give back.

For every pound of this coffee that’s purchased, we’ll donate 25% of the sale to the Monmouth Fund. Drink excellent coffee, support a young farmer, and support the institution that shepherded me through my formative years.

This is a natural Caturra with notes of milk chocolate, raspberry, vanilla and lavender, among other things. Truly an exceptional coffee.

* If every student enrolled at Monmouth right now bought a pound of this coffee, Norman would have to get back to work. Let’s ask Norman to get back to work.