We truly believe in direct and long-term relationships between roasters and producers, to ensure good quality coffee, quality of life and preservation of nature. Our latest partnership is with Joiner Alvarado in Costa Rica. The coffee he and his family produce, has been one of our favorites for the last couple of years, so you can imagine we are very happy to introduce this beautiful coffee to you.

Joiner and his family started this project 7 years ago. Their farm is located very close to “Cerro Chirripo”, which is the highest point in Costa Rica. The area where they are located is a very cold place and it was believed that coffee didn’t grow well at such low temperatures, however Joiner, his family and a lot of effort got very good results. They aim to improve every year, by planting new varieties and refining their processing methods.

We hope to visit them again at the beginning of next year. During our visits, we like to discuss ideas for the next harvest and arrange logistics, but also to catch up. For this year our Costa Rican friends made a washed coffee and because water usage is strictly regulated by the government, it’s very rare to taste a coffee produced by this method from this country.

Unfortunately, we are not able to source all our coffees directly, as we do with Joiner. Thankfully there are some partners who are able to help us source high quality coffee, according to our corresponding values and do so with 100% transparency. Without these partners, we would not be able to offer such a diverse selection of coffee throughout the year. For this box Cofinet provided us with an experimental Colombian coffee, produced by Luis Anibal Calderon. This one is pretty special; the variety originally hails from Ethiopia and is not native to Colombia. Luis was able to cultivate and understand the behavior of this plant. It also looks very curious, like a bellybutton at the bottom of the elongated cherry.

Furthermore, it’s been very hip lately to practice experimental fermentation methods to process coffee cherries. The coffee also has gone through a 40-hour anaerobic fermentation stage and is dried afterwards.