Costa Rica - Aquiares Estate

Flavour Profile - Brown Sugar / Citrus

Region: Turrialba, Cartago

Process: Red Honey

Producer: Diego Robelo, Aquiares Estate

Our first ever Costa Rican coffee! I’m really happy with how this one is tasting. It’s clean and sweet, with a lovely brown sugar note and a bright citrus finish.

Aquiares was founded in 1890 on the slopes of the Turrialba Volcano. The name means “land between rivers”, and that’s exactly where you’ll find it, between the Aquiares and Turrialba rivers. Coffee grows here in volcanic soils between 820 and 1,400 metres, under shade trees that help protect the soil and give birds a place to live.

One of my favourite parts of the Aquiares story is what Diego’s father, Alfonso Robelo, did when he took over the running of the estate. The farm owned the houses its workers lived in, so Alfonso set up a way for families to own their homes. Over time, what began as housing for farm workers grew into a town where people own homes and run businesses of their own.

Diego Robelo and his team grow, process and mill their coffee on the estate. They also set aside plots to trial different coffee varieties and see which ones grow well in Turrialba’s conditions. Aquiares built its reputation on washed coffees, and this lot shows another side of what the team does.

So what is Red Honey? A natural coffee dries inside the whole cherry, while a washed coffee has the fruit and the sticky layer underneath removed before drying. With honey processing, the skin comes off and some of that sticky layer, called mucilage, stays on. At Aquiares, the team handpicks the cherries for this lot and dries the beans in partial shade for 7 to 15 days. How much mucilage stays on and how the beans are dried help distinguish red honey from other honey processes.