Last month, Coffee shop imports announced a novel documentary series, Ecos del Café: Narrativas de Productores Costarricenses. In the three-part series, the green coffee importers interview some of their production partners in Costa Rica to learn more about the people behind the coffee. In the first episode, Cafe Imports spoke with Alexandre and Magali, siblings and third-generation coffee farmers at Sierra San Luis Micromill in Greece’s West Valley, Costa Rica.
Now Cafe Imports is back with another Ecos del Café installation. This time they head to the Southeast to interview Diego Abarca Quiros from Alto San Juan Micromill in the Tarrazu region.
In the eight-and-a-half-minute film, Abarca discusses how he began growing coffee and how he came to produce specialty coffee. A fourth-generation coffee producer, Abarca inherited Finca San Calletano from his father at the teenage age of 15. The three-hectare farm has two distinct microclimates, one in the cloud-covered higher elevations, reaching a peak of 1,650 meters above sea level, and the other in the lower areas, around 1,400 meters above sea level.
As a teenage farmer, Abarca began delving into the science behind coffee production, learning to analyze crops through cupping and metrics like Brix tests for sugar content. He discovered that Finca San Calletano had all the traits needed to produce specialty coffee, especially in its high-altitude microclimate.
This led to Abarca creating the Alto San Juan micromill in 2015, where he could incorporate many of the processing techniques from his research into individual microlots. Indeed, thanks to this research, the coffees processed at Alto San Juan have, over time, moved from washed to natural or honey, the two processes that Abarca believes Finca San Calletano is best suited to producing.
It’s another fascinating look at the people behind the coffee we drink every day. Creativity, pride and joy, Ecos del Café shows once again that the art and passion in coffee begin long before the jute. For more information, visit Cafe Imports’ official website.
