La Minita, Costa Rica

La Minita made its reputation over thirty years ago by removing every blemished bean by hand.  The cup offers a pure coffee flavor of exceptional clarity and finesse with traces of orange, milk chocolate, and clear maple syrup. This harvest is the finest in many years.

On an east-west axis, bordered by Tarrazu River to the south and the Candelaria river to the north. They converge in the west descending to the Pacific ocean. The two rivers help cool the farm’s slopes at lower altitudes. There are 17 miles of roads on farm to be maintained.

This is a grand cru estate coffee. We've found La Minita to be one of the most consistent, perfectly crafted estate coffees in the world, year after year. Consumers first became acquainted with La Minita in 1988 when George introduced it in The Coffee Connection. It became one of The Coffee Connection’s most in-demand coffees despite being, at that time, one of its most expensive.

La Minita is the applied to the green coffee sorting process. While many farm’s “first” (best quality) constitute 60% or more of their production after milling, La Minita selects slightly over 20%, eliminating all – or as close as you can get to all - defects which might blemish your cup.

La Minita has published a beautiful book, Hacienda La Minita, about the farm. Not only is there a lot of information on how its coffee is produced along with stunning photographs, but also some fascinating presentations by Bill McAlpin to the coffee industry during the 1990’s, some of which were quite prescient and all of which show a truly unique player in the specialty field.