HIGHLAND COLLECTION

Whole Bean Coffee

[KOH-STUH • REE-KUH • UH-KWEE-AR-ES • ES-TATE]

Process: Anaerobic Natural

Red wine, Plum, Gummy Bears

Dive into our newest Highland Collection from Costa Rica. Notes of red wine and a syrupy body, this anaerobic process coffee has a beautiful plum finish.

The name Aquiares means “land between rivers” in the Huetar indigenous language, and Aquiares Estate is commonly referred to as “Aquiares Coffee and Community.” It is the largest farm in Costa Rica and home to 1,800 people. Although the farm was founded in 1890, Alfonso Robelo is the man responsible for its transformation a century later. Alfonso arrived in Costa Rica in the 1980’s seeking refuge from the civil war in Nicaragua, where he was politically active. When politics soured into violence, he fled the country to keep his family and himself safe after receiving several threats against his life. Once in Costa Rica, Alfonso began building the Aquiares community on the enchanting slopes of the Turrialba volcano, a lush area of forests, rivers, fauna, and bright flora.

Alfonso challenged the status quo, transforming the relationship between landowner and farm workers. He brought a visionary approach to Aquiares, a farm suffering from low prices and instability. Aquiares had more than 200 employee homes on the farm, but because none owned their home, there was great insecurity in the workforce. Alfonso saw this as an opportunity to strengthen the company by having people feel pride in the coffee they produce. He evolved the farm into a small town where workers purchased their own homes. Today, Aquiares remains a model of sustainable agriculture.

Nowadays Alfonso’s son, Diego, manages the farm. Under his lead, the farm has taken a fresh approach to specialty coffee and exploring the farm’s potential. Through excellent agricultural management, embracing new varieties, and experimenting with processing, Aquiares has become a trailblazer among specialty coffee producers in Costa Rica and all of Central America.

Centroamericano H1 is an F1 hybrid variety generated by crossing the Sarchimor T-5296 and a wild Rume Sudan variety. It is reproduced through a tissue culture cloning process called somatic embryogenesis. This cultivar has been distributed among coffee producers in Central America over the last decade and the first productive harvests are now available. Turrialba’s climate is well suited to growing this new variety, and Aquaires is up to the challenge of meeting its complex nutritional needs. This hybrid represents the best of the farm and cupping worlds because it is high-yielding and rust-resistant, and also has a complex, elegant profile.

The Centroamericano variety was especially selected for Anaerobic Natural processing because of its high mucilage content. The cherries are floated and washed with fresh water but not depulped. Afterwards, the coffee cherries are placed in a stainless steel tank with a one-way air valve. In the tank the coffee starts to ferment with the natural microorganisms and yeast present on the coffee cherries. The fermentation pushes out all the oxygen and after one or two hours an anaerobic environment is created within the tank. This fermentation continues for a total time of 24 hours. After fermenting, the cherries are washed again with fresh water and dried in the solar dryer. For two days they are first placed on a ceramic patio and then finish drying on layered beds within the solar dryer.