Costa Rica Tarrazu Hacienda La Minita

Description

One of our longest running coffees – celebrating 30 years together!

Our Costa Rica Tarrazu Hacienda La Minita coffee is a Rainforest Alliance Certified, medium bodied, soft coffee with a black cherry characteristic flavor. Kaladi Coffee has been proud to be one of the handful of roasters selected by the Hacienda La Minita estate to roast this special coffee since the early nineties, making this our longest, continuously purchased coffee.

The La Minita estate spans some 1,200 acres of the richest, most biologically diverse, farm land in the Tarrazu river valley of Costa Rica. The farm is the realization of William McAlpine, who helped create the world’s greatest coffee.

Spread across 800 acres, over a million coffee trees grow in a cultivated, shaded environment that provides the optimum conditions to consistently produce quality coffee. 350,000 of these trees are pruned back, relieving the stress of production. 250 acres are reserved as virgin rainforest and will never be cultivated. The remaining acreage consists of roads and homes.

Only about twenty percent of the coffee harvested will ultimately become La Minita coffee. A rigorous quality control means only the best beans bear the “La Minita” trade mark.

A managed system of shade trees is utilized throughout the farm consisting of a variety of species that creates an ecological balance. Citrus trees are interspersed to provide much needed fluids to workers in the fields. During the “Fiesta del Cafe,” many families join in the harvesting of cherries, some traveling from far away to take advantage of La Minita’s higher pay. The estate has become a local legend and is home year round to some 90 families.

In the afternoons, trucks pick up the harvested cherries from designated collection areas where the pickers are paid cash for their day’s labor. From there, the cherries are delivered to a central collection center and then loaded into a semi-trailer. Throughout the evening a long line of lights can be seen snaking down the twisty mountain roads as semis deliver cherries to the processing mills.

As required by Costa Rica law, the processing mills are enclosed systems: the water must be as clean leaving the mill as it was coming in.

Due to a lack of flat land, most coffee in Costa Rica is mechanically dried. La Minita, however, is sun-dried; creating a softer, more mellow taste. Additionally, La Minita coffee is “cured” for sixty days before final prepping for export instead of the standard thirty.

Even after all of this, the coffee is then hand sorted, removing any reamining defects that could adversely effect the flavor. Sorters will work only for a couple of hours at a time, taking several breaks to ensure only the very best beans become La Minita.