Since the end of the 19th century coffee has been a major part of the economy of Costa Rica. Since 1990 coffee prices have fallen drastically all over the world, and tourism has come to replace coffee as the largest segment of the Costa Rican economy. However, coffee farming still has a major impact on the culture of Costa Rica, and to experience real native Costa Rican life everyone should at least visit at least one coffee farm.
A separate company-Costa Rica Study Tours-operates the Monteverde coffee tour with the permission of the Cooperativa Santa Elena. The tour begins in Monteverde at the newly remodeled coffee shop belonging to the Cooperativa Santa Elena, owners of the brand café Monteverde.
To see the coffee farms everyone hops into a van for the drive to nearby San Luis. San Luis is one of the five villages of Monteverde, but the low altitude makes it seem like a different world entirely. The drive down to San Luis is steep; the road that is nicknamed 'la trocha' is dramatic and spectacular. If it is a clear day the van will stop and allow you to take a few pictures of the Gulf of Nicoya and the waterfall of San Luis. San Luis is at an altitude
Shortly you arrive at the coffee farm - 'Finca la Bella'. The coffee farm-Finca la Bella-is a communal farm divided into twenty-three parcels each owned by twenty-three local families. The families were Each family was given the land free of charge to farm their own coffee and in return they contribute ten percent to the Cooperativa coope.
The tour begins in the lush coffee fields, which in this case are made more beautiful by the shade trees, and ; at this point in the tour, many different aspects of coffee cultivation are discussed. Firstly, all the coffee grown here is arabica strain (shade grown) rather than the robusta (sun grown) coffee that formerly dominated the industry in Costa Rica. This type of coffee offers several advantages; it is more environmentally friendly and higher quality coffee. (**Why is it more environmentally friendly??** Because it uses less chemicals and pesticides, and other reasons-find out.) The only drawback disadvantage is the arabica plants produce fewer beans than the robusta variety.
Coffee can only be grown at certain heights, generally between 800 and 1400 meters in altitude, which explains why coffee is grown in San Luis and not in other zones of Monteverde. It requires moderate temperatures and good soil.
The coffee harvest in Costa Rica so strongly affected the nation that school and work schedules used to be arranged to allow both adults and children to pick. Each year during the months of December until February (depending on the altitude) families would congregate on the coffee plantations and pick from sunup to sundown, each worker paid by the basket of coffee picked (.95¢ for each ten lbs.), the fruit from the trees being more valuable than the fruit on the ground. Today coffee has become so cheap that farmers no longer pick up coffee that has already fallen from the tree prizing quality over quantity.
Each coffee tree needs four years to provide its first harvest. The plant may then be harvested once a year for the next six years, then must be pruned short and allowed two years before the next six year harvests. Each plant can produce for only thirty years. Coffee plants require a great deal of rain and still no one has invented a system for irrigating it.
The visitor will have a chance to pick a coffee bean, taste it and see how it is picked and placed in giant sacks to be picked up by the factory. After leaving the farm, you will travel to the factory where coffee is cleaned, dried and roasted. You will see how many farmers participate in the coffee process. Local growers place huge bushels of coffee all along the road for pickup and nearly everyone is a member of the Coope Santa Elena.
Arriving at the factory coffee is graded for quality ripe fruit should produce grade A coffee and unripe fruit should be classified grade B. Grade A beans sell for $6.50 a pound under the fair trade system, while grade B sells for $1.80 a pound.
The fruit run through a machine that removes the fruit from the seed (bean). Ripe fruit is easily shucked while unripe fruit must be soaked in water overnight to remove the fruit this also affects the quality and is another reason unripe fruit makes grade B beans. Because café Monteverde is a fair trade operation, this water must be recycled and fruit must be grown without pesticides.
Then the beans are further agitated in an industrial sized machine to remove the tough membrane from the bean. Next, the coffee beans are naturally dried in the sun for 15 days. It is quite impressive to see the beans drying in the sun, the large neat piles would fill a football field.
There is also a coffee called 'natural coffee' that is produced by a different process. The beans are dried without removing the fruit allowing the flavor of the fruit to further soak into the bean as it dries. This fairly new process produces a 'fruity' tasting coffee that is even more expensive than grade A.
The next stage of production is roasting that is done on the premises of the coffee factory. The factory has roasted their own coffee since the seventies, and owned one of the first roasting machines in Costa Rica in1989. This allowed farmers to roast their own coffee rather than paying another company to roast the coffee. Thus the coffee is roasted when beans are fresher and much more money goes directly to the farmers of the cooperative.
Twice a week coffee is roasted, 45 lbs at a time, if you are lucky you can watch the process. Amazingly the difference between dark roast and light roast coffee is extremely slight. Light roast is toasted for 11 minutes and dark roast is toasted for 11 minutes and 30 seconds.
Finally the tour concludes back at the Café Monteverde coffee shop where you can sample the coffee and purchase some to take home. They also sell homemade empanadas, tamales and pastries. Café Monteverde will even mail coffee to the United States and Canada for a reasonable price.
Our Site via RSS
