The Audio version of In My Mug, the weekly coffee subscription podcast from Hasbean
Episodes
Sunday Sep 25, 2016
Sunday Sep 25, 2016
When we first found this farm in 2013 we had very little information about it; so much so that it didn’t even have a name! Back then all we knew was that the coffee was grown by Carlos Arrieta and it was delicious, but since then I've been lucky enough to visit the farm on trips to Costa Rica and over the past few years have found out lots more. Let me tell you what I know so far...
I first got to meet Carlos in 2013 at the exporter's office on the last day of my visit in Costa Rica. He arrived around 10 minutes after I had cupped the first table of coffees, where I had found one lot that was making me sing. It just had to be his coffee.
Here ensued the worst negotiation to ever take place in the history of coffee buying...
"How much do you want?" I asked.
He replies, "How much do you like it?"
"A lot” I say.
"I'd like a lot then please" Carlos says.
"OK..."
Luckily at this point a grown-up from the exporter's office stepped in and made sure I didn't give Carlos my house, car and pension plan. We agreed a price that rewarded Carlos more than he had ever gotten before and left me with a home to return to in Stafford.
The year before last I got to spend some time with Carlos and his family, I stopped for some lunch, hung out and asked lots of questions. First of all there's the mill, which is called Arbar and is very close to the house, it has drying tables and a small nursery but didn't have a deplulper (more about this later!) The mill was brand new and before it existed they would just sell their coffee to the local coop and so have no interaction with the coffee.
Then from chatting to Carlos I found out that he actually owns two small farms; this one being El Oasis, which provided the coffee we bought back in 2013. The farm is located in the Western Valley region near to the town of Lourdes de Naranjo and is located at 1,600 metres above sea level. It grows mostly Caturra and a tiny bit of Villa Sarchi, with plans to plant some small micro lots in the future. The farm produces between 700–1,400 KG of coffee a year.
Carlos runs the farm with his wife and children, Maria Isabel, Yesica, Karen, Stephen and Jose Ignacio. He has owned this farm for 16 years but only started processing the coffee himself in 2014 (while still paying someone else to pulp it for him (more on this later). He hadn't been able to present his coffee to a single buyer previously, so he would send it to the exporter we use in Costa Rica and thankfully that's how we found him!
You may remember that 2 years ago the coffee was priced a little differently; our normal, nicely rounded-down price was not there. The coffee should have been sold for £7.50 (we negotiated a small price drop from the previous year because we bought everything from both farms, and this works out that there are some economies of scale compared to the £10.00 of 2013), but we charged £7.88. Well, this was so that we (by “we” I mean “you”) could buy Carlos and his family a depulper for his next harvest. This meant he didn’t have to pay someone else to pulp his coffee, and he could gain more control of his amazing coffee.
You can go and see what your generosity bought as I lent the money to Carlos as I promised you would pay it back (and you did!) at the blog post here.
Last year one of my roasting team Roland (of Roland's Daft Fact fame) travelled to Costa Rica to be on the jury for their Cup of Excellence competition, if you ever wondered what a coffee roaster from the UK would get up to if let loose in Costa Rica then you should have a read about his trip in Roland Glew's Costa Rican Adventure.
In the cup immediately this is sweet, white sugar sweet like someone slipped a spoonful in when you weren't looking. That sweetness is followed up by apricot and a lovely velvety texture before shifting towards lemon in the finish, a super clean and sweet coffee.
- Country: Costa Rica
- Region: Western Valley
- City: Lourdes de Naranjo
- Farm: El Oasis
- Farmer: Carlos Arrieta
- Micro Mill: Arbar
- Altitude: 1,600 m.a.s.l.
- Varietals Grown: Catuai, Caturra and small amount of Villa Sarchi
- Processing System: Yellow Honey