QUALITY COFFEE

The growth of exports in the select coffee market, mainly to the United States, the increase in the sales price of export-quality coffee and the best differentials paid for our coffee in the primary world markets, are some of the successful results of implementing programs designed to achieve an increasingly higher quality bean.

Why is Costa Rican coffee better?

100% of our coffee comes from the Arabica specie, the Caturra and Catuaí varieties, which produce a high quality bean and a cup with better organoleptic characteristics: pleasant, aromatic, and select. The planting of coffee Robusta has been prohibited by law since 1989 because of its inferior cup quality. In addition, the Catimores have stopped being cultivated, on a large scale, to preserve cup quality.

Our coffee is grown in volcanic and low-acidic fertile soil, conditions ideal for production. More than 80% of the coffee area is located between 800 and 1,600 meters (2,625 feet-5,250 feet) above sea level and in temperatures between 17 and 28ºC(62.6ºF-82.4ºF), with annual precipitation between 2,000 and 3,000 millimeters (79 inches-118 inches).

In 2001, the National Coffee Institute, ICAFE, the sector’s representative, launched the National Coffee Plan with measures to improve the conditions in which coffee is produced, processed, and marketed.

The advanced technology that the Costa Rican coffee producer has used for more than 200 years has allowed the plantations to adapt to the characteristics of each zone.  Today Costa Rican coffee is grown in 8 production zones: Brunca, Turrialba, Tres Ríos, Orosi, Tarrazú, the Central and Western Valleys and Guanacaste. 

The manual and selective method of picking is used: only ripe berries are selected (at optimal ripeness); this allows the coffee to be more easily washed. Each Costa Rican coffee region signed a Quality Improvement Agreement in which the owners of the processing plants have committed to receive and process only ripe fruit, which guarantees better cup quality.

The Costa Rican coffee sector only uses wet processing, in which the removal of the pulp is done the same day that it is harvested. Also, the classification and cleaning, after removing the pulp, is done before the fermenting process, with the idea of eliminating the remaining pulp and removing possible defective beans. 

The sun-dry method is used in the Costa Rican process, one of the more preferred systems of the demanding world markets; the process lasts 7 days. Mechanical drying is also used, which reduces the precise optimal drying time (12% humidity) to only 24 hours.

As another display of Costa Rican coffee quality, the first tasting competition was organized in 2007, in which 10 best coffees were selected as winners. Three of them were selected by a panel of experts during the Cupping Pavilion competition of the Specialty Coffee Association of America.

Differential payments also form part of these measures taken to achieve quality. Registration, verification, control and follow-up of the commercialization process of the bean with unique characteristics were established in order to stimulate production, processing, and commercialization of the highest quality of coffee.

The processing firms that participate are committed to receiving, processing, drying, storing, and marketing the bean completely separate from the others processed conventionally as well as paying for it with differential payments with prices superior to those of conventional coffee. The price difference is significant.

The goal of Costa Rica’s coffee growing sector is to continue improving bean sales while adhering to its strategy of “quality, not quantity”; to always provide increasing value to our coffee and to increasingly provide the local market with quality coffee.