La Pira
Carlos Urena Cecilano is the producer of La Pira, a farm and micro mill in Tarrazu, Costa Rica. Last year Carlos’ coffee won 11th place in the Cup of Excellence. He grows Geisha and Caturra varietals on his farm. He employs an interesting weeding technique: goats and sheep. This technique weeds without the use of pesticides and also fertilizes the fields (if you know what I mean), which keeps additional fertilizer use down at the farm.

The coffee is carefully processed with minimal water use, essentially producing a semi-washed coffee. Coffee is moved onto African drying beds and slowly dries in the sun for around ten days.

La Candellia

9 siblings came together to form the immaculate mill La Candellia.
Each sibling turns in coffee from their own farm into La Candellia to be processed. La Candellia processes a washed coffee and a honey coffee. They are really riding the Geisha wave, planting and processing more this year. They also work in micro lots of Typica, but most of the production is still the varietal Caturra.
This is a solid, beautiful, clean mill. I’m very much looking forward to cupping this one.

La Lia

La Lia is a micro mill of 5 siblings in Tarrazu. Only perfectly ripe cherries are accepted at this clean efficient mill. Almost all the coffee is washed but they are doing a bit of honey. They maintain super clean patios that are raked constantly for even drying of the coffee over 10 days. All lots from the siblings’ farms are kept separate for complete traceability. The family was also sweet enough to brew some of their stellar coffee with some cookies and bread to revive me.

Great day meeting the producer’s of some amazing coffees.

Oliver—-