Farm: Los Girasoles

Micro mill: Los Angeles

Region: La Bandera de Dota, Tarrazu

Altitude: 1900 masl

Picked: Jan – Feb 2014

Process: Fully washed

Owner: Familia Calderon

Varietals: Red Catuai

Production process: Local pickers and family members are selecting the ripest cherries. Using an Eco pulper they are able to adjust the amount of mucilage they want to remove before fermenting or drying. In this case it is a “fully washed” meaning they mechanically remove around 70-80% mucilage and then soak underwater before take it to the drying beds.

Drying: Dried on raised beds for about 8-10 days. They are now building more beds under shade for increased capacity for “secado lento” – slow drying.

Notes: Ricardo Calderon started this mill with his two sons, Maikol and Diego, after producing coffee for decades. They are right next door to his brother, Omar, and their micromill Granitos de Ortiz.
The best Costa Rican coffees seem to be consistently coming from the Micro Mills that are now more or less spread throughout the most important coffee regions in the country, including Tarrazu and the West Valley. This so-called coffee revolution started about 15 years ago, and has changed the way the specialty roasters and importers are looking at the Costa Rican coffees. It’s structured in a way where you have a central mill that’s able to process coffees from the smaller surrounding farms. They can often be small communities or basically family groups that have their own separate small farms and blocks of land, but only one micro mill for processing and drying.

This farm is one out of a small range of exclusively selected micro mills where we have found the quality and flavor profile unique according to the process and varietal. In most cases this is a result of close partnership with the coffee producers and the exporter we work with, Exclusive Coffees, who are actively helping the produc-ers on quality control and dry milling, and helping to market the coffees on their behalf.