Costa Rican Coffee

Costa Rica is a small country in Central America about the size of West Viginia. In that space, there is a lot of coffee and a great deal of variation in flavor and quality. Several variables interact to determine how a coffee ultimately tastes. There are the human variables such as the care taken in picking, milling, and sorting the coffee, the type and extent of fertilization, the use of pesticides and herbicides, pruning practices, and how shade is managed. There are also natural variables such as soil composition and temperature and rainfall patterns. These natural variables are all encapsulated in the concept of the micro-climate.

A growing trend in coffee producing countries is to identify the unique micro-climates where coffee is grown and to group them into larger but still well defined growing regions that produce coffee with distinct characteristics. Costa Rica has seven of these growing regions: West Valley, Central Valley, Tarrazú, Orosi, Turrialba, Tres Rios, and Brunca. The best coffees from these regions taste different from each other. Our Costa Rican coffee is from Hacienda La Minita in the Tarrazú region, which is just south of the capital city of San José.

A great deal of care is taken with La Minita coffee in an effort to produce the best tasting coffee possible. This starts as early as when the trees are still too young to produce coffee. New coffee trees are grown in a nursery before being planted in production areas of the farm. The nursery is positioned between the side of the mountain and a line of tall shade trees to keep the trees out of direct sunlight and at a cooler temperature. A gravity powered sprinkler system provides the extra water needed by these young trees.

Shade in production areas of the plantation is carefully managed. During the rainy season when there is nearly continuous cloud cover, the shade trees are severely pruned back. These trees are Erythrina poeppigiana, a porous tree that grows very quickly to provide adequate shade once the rainy season is over.

La Minita also recently switched to a selective pruning method in which every tree on the plantation is evaluated every year by skilled coffee growers to determine if pruning is needed and how much. This costs more to do than pruning every fifth row each year but if the latest crop is representative of this change it results in a more consistant and better tasting coffee.

A 200 acre forest reserve is kept on the plantation. This reserve is spread through the farm and represents 20% of the plantation. This land is kept untouched and provides a habitat for native animals. The purpose of this land is not purely out of a desire to maintain some of the natural environment. Soil samples are taken from the reserves and the production areas. Analysis of these samples allows very selective fertilization to bring the soil in the production areas to the condition the soil would be in had coffee not been growing there. This is the only chemical input on the farm. No herbicides or pesticides are used on the coffee and all of the weeding is done by hand.

Coffee pickers on La Minita are expected to only pick the ripe cherries. They also must be careful not to damage the trees while picking on the steep mountain slopes. This truly is skilled labor and La Minita pays a premium for the care and quality of work expected. Once the coffee is picked, the cherries must be moved to the mill very quickly or the coffee will turn bad. This coffee goes to the new mill we visited in 2001. The process by which coffee cherries are turned into green coffee ready for export is explained in other articles and in our photo album.

All of this results in a coffee that we like very much.

Neal Wilson visited Hacienda La Minita and the mill that processes La Minita coffee in 2001 and 2002, seeing how things are done first hand both during the harvest and while the coffee is not yet ripe. He has also cupped coffees from all seven growing regions in Costa Rica.