Region: Tarrazu/Hacienda La Minita, Costa Rica
Elevation: 3,900 ft - 5,400 ft above sea level
Cultivars: Caturra, Catuai Red, Catuai Yellow, Tipica Hibrido
Processing Method: Washed, Sun-Dried
Screen Size: 16
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Costa Rican La Minita
Cup Characteristics: A brilliant acidity, a medium body, and sweet flavors of orange citrus, caramelized sugar, and fine chocolate. It is impeccably balanced with a long satisfying finish.
Hacienda La Minitas flagship trademark coffee, called “La Minita,” is taken only from the first-quality selection of each stage in the process and is finished with a unique hand cleaning. This final step takes a virtually perfect product and, with over 30,000 worker hours of effort, transforms it into the very special coffee that is bagged for export as La Minita. The name, La Minita, means "small (gold) mine" and can be traced to local legend that tells of pre-Colombian Indians searching for ornamental gold in the plantation soils. http://www.laminita.com/aboutlaminita.htm
Hacienda La Minita, on coffee farming in Costa Rica:
We produce one crop of coffee each year. For us, the cycle begins with the first rains of the year, between the end of March and the beginning of May. The timing of the first rain is essential, for it is the rain that signals the tree to begin flowering. Days after the initial rains, small honeysuckle-like flowers form on the trees. The flowering is of critical importance to the coffee crop, for the node where each flower formed will produce a single coffee cherry. After the initial rains, we enter into the seven month rainy season. Insecticides are not used on the farm and they are weeded 3 times a year with machete. At the end of the rainy season comes the ripening of the coffee cherries. The large green cherries begin to turn either red or yellow and fill with the sweet miel (honey) that surrounds the seeds. Unlike the flowering, the ripening of the fruit is slow and uneven. Only the ripe fruit is picked. We pick each tree on the farm up to five times to harvest the fruit. Trucks pick up the coffee from the receiving stations (recibidores) on the farms and transport it to the mills. It is critical that processing of the coffee begins within 24 hours of the coffee being picked from the trees. If the processing is delayed, the fruit will begin to spoil ruining the the coffee seeds contained within the cherry.
As the coffee is unloaded from the trucks, it is measured into a large rectangular container called a medida. The milling of the coffee is critical in determining the final quality of the coffee. Of 100 pounds of green equivalent cherries that enter the milling process, only about 23 pounds make it to become La Minita.
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