Producer: Ivan Solis Rivera / Cafe Solis y Cordero Farm: Finca Voo Location: Copey De Dota, Tarrazu Variety: Geisha Process: Black Honey Altitude: 2,000 masl Fermentation ▪▪▪▫▫ Sweetness ▪▪▪▪▫ Acidity ▪▪▪▪▫ Roast ▪▪▪▫▫ Café Solis y Cordero in Tarrazu is the 1st Place Winner at the 2024 Costa Rica Cup of Excellence for the Experimental Category, a noteworthy ascent from 2nd Place Overall in 2023. In 2024 too, they placed 5th in the 2024 Washed Category and 16th in Natural and Honey. Founded in 2018 by the husband-and-wife team Ivan Solis and Leandra Cordero, Café Solis y Cordero represents the courageous efforts and hard-won accomplishments of the country’s leading specialty coffee producing families among the newer generation. Their rise to 1st Place in the 2024 COE Experimental Category recognizes their tenacious and meticulous approach to innovation aimed at producing finely differentiated specialty coffees of uncompromisingly high quality. Growing up amid the inevitable influence of a centuries-old national coffee heritage, they witnessed coffee’s power to weave a viable social fabric among and across communities that rely on coffee cultivation as the primary source of livelihood while acting as an enabler of preserving and passing on family values and legacies enabled by the coffee farm lands. As such, they regard coffee as a vital instrument for upholding the ethos of the authentic Costa Rican way of life, Pura Vida — understood as living life to the fullest, savoring simple pleasures, and maintaining an optimistic, proactive attitude within an equitably thriving society — and have taken on the task of doing their part in perpetuating it, through the work they do at their family’s micromill, Beneficio Sta. Fe, and farms Finca Voo and Vara Blanca. As a micro-mill, Beneficio Sta. Fe serves as a fully-equipped and environment-friendly post-harvest processing hub. It is where they implement the appropriate protocols to boost the quality and value of the coffees cultivated and harvested by the Los Santos area smallholder coffee farming families, affording them the opportunity to attain the commensurate compensation. Nestled in the renowned Tarrazu region, the micro-mill Beneficio Santa Fe serves as a fully-equipped and environment-friendly post-harvest processing hub. It is where Ivan and Leandra implement the appropriate protocols to boost the quality and value of the more traditional coffee varieties like Caturra and Catuai cultivated and harvested by the Los Santos area smallholder coffee farming families. The farmers’ collaboration with Café Solis y Cordero affords them opportunities to attain the commensurate recognition and compensation for the specialty coffee-grade quality they produce, and contributes to strengthening the country’s reputation as an origin of distinctive flavor profiles. Finca Voo, named by Ivan and Leandra after the Portuguese word for "flight," has been identified as the launchpad for realizing their young family’s loftier dreams of producing exceptional coffees. These coffees evoke Pura Vida in a way that protects nature, promotes the well-being of their workers, and highlights terroir, calling global attention to Costa Rica as a strong contender among origin countries of singular, higher-end specialty coffees. Geisha is a rare coffee variety with an extremely delicate root system that requires the perfect alignment of climatic, agronomic, and temporal factors in order to thrive and bear cherries with the level of complexity and flavor clarity coffee champions and discerning specialty coffee connoisseurs appreciate best. It found its way to Costa Rica through CATIE or the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza. It is known for displaying complexity, distinct florality, and delicate citrus notes in the cup. While its exceptional cup quality potential has pre-eminently been recognized in association with Panama since debuting in the global luxury coffee scene in 2004, by way of the Best of Panama Auction, Geisha has also triumphantly been acclimatized to idyllic coffee-growing terrains of several countries the Central and South Americas. For Lot SF 17, the whole coffee cherries underwent 48 hours of fermentation from receipt in piles before being rinsed with clean water, pulped, and then fermented in tanks with the mucilage clinging to the coffee seeds for 24 hours. After this fermentation phase, the coffee was laid out on raised beds to sun-dry for 20 days. As a result of the Black Honey process carried out on this Tarrazu-grown Geisha, its cup profile was directed toward a uniquely multi-faceted sweetness balanced by subtle acidity, enlaced in an exotic florality enhancing its crisp and clean, tea-like character.