I have been back from my amazing trip to Costa Rica for three weeks and I am overdue in sharing some of my experiences.
After Mark, Chris and I landed and made it through immigration at the San Jose airport we met our driver, Favio, and headed straight up into the hills to tour La Minita coffee estate. With impressive views of sprawling San Jose stretching below us, our van climbed up the hills of the Terrazu region and arrived at a guest house owned by La Minita. We were greeted by Scott, sales rep for La Minita, and some surprise guests: Stephanie and Bob of Batdorf and Bronson coffee roasters, along with a couple of their customers! B&B buy their Costa Rican coffee from La Minita and have had a long relationship with the estate. It was fun to see familiar industry faces and share some Imperial cerveza overlooking the steep slopes of coffee plantings.
La Minita guesthouse
After a brief look around their guest houses, we walked around the immediate area and I was able to taste my first ripe coffee cherry! It was different than I had imagined, but still an incredible experience. I think I speak for a lot of coffee industry folks when I say that it is a highly anticipated experience. The skin of the cherry tasted surprisingly vegetal, almost like a bell pepper. The only sweet part is the small amount of mucilage, and the beans were firmer than I expected. I know folks at work were hoping I could freeze a few cherries to smuggle back home to them, but my fear of foreign prison restrained me.
The next part of our La Minita tour involved a bouncy ride down to the bottom of the valley in the back of a truck. We arrived at the coffee mill just before dinner and got to relax with some more cerveza and the wafting scent of the ferment waste (smells a little like dirty diapers, I’m just sayin). This did not deter us from enjoying a delicious meal of fresh tortillas, beans, rice, grilled beef, and (La Minita staff member) Johnny’s famous chicken.
Johnny at the grill
Our delicious dinner
After we ate we got a closer look at the mill.
At this point of harvest, the trees are stripped of all beans and much of the coffee is used for local consumption. The earlier pickings are all fully ripe cherries that are more valuable for export and fetch a higher price. The trucks that have been collecting beans from drop spots all over the estate bring their loads to the mill and begin their journey through processing. The skins are removed, the beans held in fermentation tanks to help remove the mucilage, rinsed, and then dried, leaving the parchment-covered beans for storage. La Minita (and La Hilda estate as I will describe later) uses coffee wood from pruning and coffee parchment to power the mill and dryers. With the exception of peak operating times they are able to power the entire mill!
After a whirlwind day, we headed back to our hotel in San Jose for a good night’s sleep.
Stay tuned for more…
