Costa Rica Cupping: Thursday, 3PM
The Costa Rican coffees have arrived on bar, among the first of our direct-trade coffees to arrive for the summer season. These coffees run the gammut from super-sweet citrus to cocoa, smooth juicy mouthfeels to heavy honey. We’ll be holding a cupping this Thursday 3 PM at the shop to give you a chance to taste these side-by-side.
We’ll be joined by Silas, our coffee buyer at barismo. Silas spent time earlier this year with our partner producers, and will be able to share information from his time at origin. The coffees we’ll be featuring:
Los Lobos from Rio Jorco Estate. The estate has been passed down through three generations in the Zeledon family; for the past several years we have purchased this lot of coffee, from the highest point on the estate. The Zeledon family are among the most environmentally conscious producers we have had the pleasure of working with — they have been one of the major forces in preserving the adjacent bird corridor, and exhibit great diligence in efficiency and recycling of waste products. This year we had a dramatic improvement in the quality of this coffee, with far fewer defects than in years past.
La Loma from Beneficio Don Mayo. Don Mayo’s coffees consistently place in the prestigious Cup of Excellence competiton; this has enabled them to continually re-invest in improved milling and sorting equipment. La Loma is one of the farms that mills their coffee at Don Mayo; due to its extreme elevation (2000+ meters) the coffee takes longer to ripen on the tree. This year we were able to have the coffee sorted by when it was picked, and we accepted those lots from the middle of the harvest to avoid under-ripe coffee. We’ve been featuring La Loma on the pourover bar this month, and it’ll be appearing on the cold brew tap soon.
El Quizarra is a new coffee for us this year. You may have seen it on our bar featured under the name of the mill, Jardin de Aromas. Quizarra is among the lowest elevation coffees we buy, barely above 1300 meters. While lower elevation coffees are generally regarded as being of a poorer quality, this coffee is an exception, in no small part due to the attention paid at the mill — it was among the cleanest, best organized mills we have visited. The Zbinden family has owned El Quizarra for two decades, but only in 2011 did they start the Jardin mill and begin processing their own coffee as a way to follow through on their commitment to quality.
