Santa Rosa 1900, Costa Rica

Soft stone fruit notes and a buttery body are reminiscent of almond shortbread with apricot jam.

La Cabra on Santa Rosa 1900: “This is the fourth time we have bought coffee from the Santa Rosa 1900 micro-mill, named for its location at 1900 masl in the mountainous Tarrazu region of Costa Rica. The mill is located only around 10 km from Altos del Abejonal, where we have worked with Mauricio Vindas for over 5 years. The mill processes coffee from several small farms owned by Naranjo family, mainly tended to by Efrain ‘Macho’ and his son Herberth. This lot of Red Catuai is processed using a slightly strange method when compared to most of Costa Rica. You may recognise the idea from some of the Guatemalan lots we have shared over the past few years. In Guatemala often small producers don’t have the resources to pick and process coffee on the same day, so coffee begins to ferment in cherry overnight. At Santa Rosa, they use this fermentation method by choice, and call it ‘represado’, which literally translates as ‘dammed’, like damming a river. After the pre-fermentation, where the cherries lie in plastic bags overnight, the coffee is depulped and dried as a honey with mucilage still attached. This adds a little more ferment character to the cup when compared to a standard honey, greater sweetness, and a soft and complex fruit character some of you may recognise from coffees like Ana Ramirez. Alongside this focus on processing, Macho is always keen to point out on our visits that coffee quality starts on the tree, so he places great focus on soil health and maintaining a population of bees to pollinate his plants. You can see our first visit to Macho at the Santa Rosa mill in 2015 in our ‘Brightness’ film”