Aquiares Estate - Costa Rica - Natural - Filter
An expertly dried natural lot from the famous Aquiares Estate. Expect a rich, full cup with distinctive, fresh fruits. Expect notes of grape, red apple, and pineapple.
Aquiares Estate, one of Costa Rica’s largest and most historic coffee farms, sits high on the fertile slopes of the Turrialba Volcano. Producing coffee continuously for over a century, the farm has developed an enduring model for growing high-quality specialty coffee completely sustainably. It is Rainforest Alliance Certified, is carbon negative, and supports a thriving local community of 1,800 people.
Info
Farm
Aquiares Estate is one of Costa Rica’s largest and most historic coffee farms. A church was built on it in 1925, which is now a National Architectural Historic Monument.
Region
The farm is named after it's location: Aquiares, Turrialba.
Sustainability
Aquiares is not only 100% carbon neutral, but actually carbon negative.
Elevation
The plots at Aquiares Estate vary in altitude from 1100-1400 masl.
Variety
This lot is a field blend of Obata & Marselessa: The former is a hybrid of the Timor & Villa Sarchi varieties, while the latter is a hybrid of Sarchimor & Caturra.
Process
Whole cherries undergo 3 stages of drying to produce an exceptionally sweet and clean natural.
Attention to Detail
“This lot is picked by a selected team of skilled harvesters who are paid well above the daily rate for their exceptional skill in picking only the ripest cherries”
Each tree is passed and visited up to seven times during the harvest to ensure that only fully red ripe cherries are picked. The skilled hands of the pickers represent the farm’s most valuable asset. As coffee cherries come directly from the field the same day that they are picked, they are then moved into Aquiares’ on-site wet mill.
This natural lot of Obatá & Marsellesa has been floated for density (with all floaters being removed) and then immediately moved to the farm's solar dryer patios (large greenhouses with ceramic floors) for pre-drying. After 2-3 days of pre-drying on the ceramic floors, they are moved to the farm’s raised beds, also in the covered greenhouses, where they slowly dry for around 10 days. Finally, the beans are sent to mechanically dry in a Guardiola for a day to complete the process.
Environment & Sustainability
“In 2012, Aquiares became the first farm in Costa Rica to fulfil the requirements of the Rainforest
Alliance Climate Module” Aquiares is strongly committed to, and has become an international leader in, environmental sustainability. The farm has long seen the connection between agricultural, environmental, and social health. The family have planted over 50,000 shade trees (a total of 40 different species), created natural forestry buffers around streams and rivers, prune each individual tree independently, and rotate their coffee plots with new trees to give the soil a ‘rest’. In 2007, the farm was among the very first to try to calculate its carbon balance. Today, Aquiares is the main test plot for an ongoing project between the CIRAD Institute of France and CATIE University of Costa Rica. The “Carbon-Flux project” measures greenhouse gas exchange between the farm plot and the atmosphere over long-time horizons. This research station is the only one of its kind in the world, capable of accurately measuring the emission-sequestration balance of a hectare of shaded coffee. With this tool, the researchers are developing a model that can be used by any coffee farmer in the world to estimate the carbon sequestration potential of their farm. This project is part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change research efforts. Aquiares is not only 100% carbon neutral, but actually carbon negative.
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