Another year in Costa Rica!

We've been hard at work in the first few months of the year, visiting farm partners across Central America, catching up with our friends, and making new ones along the way!

Our first trip of the season was to Costa Rica, where we work with Hacienda La Minita to bring you amazing coffees from the Tarrazú region. The coffees we tasted this year were excellent, and the first ones from the 2024 harvest will be arriving at our roastery this month!

This is our third year working with Hacienda La Minita, and our biggest by far! We bought our first full container of coffee from them this year—nearly 40,000 pounds of it. Our Santa Maria de Dota coffee is a community blend produced by 14 incredible farmers in the Dota area with post-harvest processing by Hacienda La Minita's state-of-the-art mill on the Tarrazú river. 

Thanks to the amazing team at Hacienda La Minita, we were able to purchase this coffee exclusively from one community receiving station (recibidor), and pay a premium per-pound price to the people whose coffee makes up this lot.

One of the farmers we had the chance to spend time with was Javier Umaña, who owns a beautiful farm in the community of Canet. Several members of Javier's family own parcels of farmland nearby—the land, which was used for cattle for years before coffee was planted, was divided amongst family members over the years. We met Javier's uncle, Don Rafa, last year on our first trip to the area, and were excited to visit this special area again.

Javier's farm is located at one of the highest elevations in the area, and produces incredible coffees. In addition to buying the cherries from the receiving station nearby for our washed process Santa Maria de Dota coffee, we arranged to buy a micro lot from Javier, to be processed naturally by La Minita's processing team. That coffee will arrive later this year, along with other delicious microlots from Hacienda La Minita.

We're incredibly grateful to the entire La Minita team for their hospitality at the farm, and for working with us year after year to find amazing coffees for our customers back home.