The history of Costa Rican coffee

Coffee came to Costa Rica as early as 1779 and within 50 years was generating more revenue than any other crop, but by the 1830’s they were growing more coffee than the ships heading south could take. And virtually no infrastructure existed for transporting even a small amount of green coffee to the east coast of Costa Rica (where London was a mere 5,000 miles away). The distribution woes of Costa Rican coffee producers reached the ears of an up-and-coming shipping magnate named William Le Lacheur in 1841 and on Christmas day, 1841 he sailed The Monarch into port at Puntarenas, Costa Rica, and thus began a long and mutually beneficial relationship. On one voyage to London in late in 1843, the Monarch carried more than half a million pounds of Costa Rican coffee.

The Process

This lot was naturally processed on patio and raised beds. First, cherries are selectively harvested by hand to select only ripest. These are then separated by floatation to further select only the densest, highest quality cherries for processing. These are then slowly dried on raised beds for an average of 30 days, after which they are rested in a cool dry environment prior to secondary processing (hulling, grading, sorting and bagging for export)