Former Café Blá barista Nico Salcedo set out in 2017 with a mission to help a coffee growing region in his native Costa-Rica, suffering the blows of a financial crisis, to rebuild the infrastructure and quality in the area, thus increasing the market value of coffees grown in the lesser known Miramar region.
The first producer he started working with was Don Roberto Jiménez of the micro-mill, El Bueyerito. We have really enjoyed seeing the growth of this project and with it the huge leaps in quality made each year. For the last couple of years, Don Roberto has started experimenting with new processing techniques, which have yielded some of our favourite nano-lots. This season we have a fantastically clean, juicy and wonderfully weird anaerobic lot. There are only 120kg's of this gem, so don't expect it to be around forever!!!
Here's what Nico has to say about Don Roberto and El Bueyerito:
Roberto Jiménez, the owner of the micro-mill El Bueyerito, has been doing this for the past six years with approximately 50 small producers. Jiménez explains that he has given everything he has to enhance the quality of their arabica coffee to those interested, but they still need some help as his coffee that does not come from a popular region.
In his region the local cooperative just underwent a budgetary crisis, causing the local production to drop from 2,000 hectares to only 600 per year; some producers are even selling their coffee at a price that doesn’t cover the costs. Through this first project, Planting Costa Rica wants to help the producers at Miramar to overcome this crisis and introduce them to the specialty market.
This unique coffee is the product of a KICKSTARTER success, and the solution to local development.
Coffee processed by this Micro-Mill comes from the under-explored high-lands of Miramar, Costa Rica. Smooth breezes from the Atlantic reach its crops generating the perfect micro-climate which produces an incredibly sweet, yet very balanced cup.
