COSTA RICA - San Pablo Gesha & Ethiopia (Yellow Honey)

Passanger (Lancaster, PA)

Costa Rica - San Pablo Gesha & Ethiopia 285g

Delicately layered aromatics of violet, fresh apricot, and raw honey introduce a cup profile offering a delightfully creamy mouthfeel and enticing flavors of honeysuckle, vanilla, and white peach.

Region: Tarrazu
Producer: Roger Urena
Altitude: 1900-2050masl
Variety: Gesha & Ethiopia 
Process: Yellow Honey

Roger Urena is a remarkable coffee producer whose Santa Teresa project, in Costa Rica’s Tarrazu region, is a true labor of love. This fascinating field blend of gesha and an Ethiopian landrace variety, produced on the San Pablo plot that Roger manages with his son Jose, is a fascinating exploration of plant genetics - presented through the lens of meticulously executed honey processing.

Roger Urena is a third generation coffee producer whose Santa Teresa project, located in Costa Rica’s famous Tarrazu region, is truly a labor of love. Roger grew up with coffee: helping his father with the family’s dairy and coffee farming enterprises and caring for a nursery of fledgling coffee trees when he was just 15 years old. Following a period of time working in the States, Roger returned to Costa Rica and invested his hard earned savings in land located near the mountain peak of Santa Teresa, just to the southeast of the town of Santa Maria de Dota. The land had previously been owned by members of Roger’s family, and, with an ideal climate and elevations from 1600-2050 masl, he knew it was the perfect place to create the coffee farm that he had dreamed of for many years.

Some years later, Roger’s main Santa Teresa farm is a hugely impressive operation including 10 hectares of coffee, 50 hectares of protected forest, a micromill featuring a Penagos pulping machine, shaded raised beds and concrete patios for drying, mechanical dryers, and a warehouse. Plans are already underway to build a dry mill to complete the operation.

At an early stage, Roger noted that most farmers in Costa Rica were cultivating caturra and catuaí and thought that planting many additional varieties on his farm would be a useful way to differentiate his business. In addition to catuaí, he currently cultivates an impressive list of varieties including Rume Sudan, Pacamara, Villalobos, Bourbon, Gesha, SL-28, and Mejorado.

This interesting coffee comes from a passion project that is shared by Roger and his son Jose. Some years back, they decided to rent land, in another part of Tarrazu called San Pablo, that is known to be another area capable of producing stellar coffees. The San Pablo plot is planted with gesha and another Ethiopian landrace variety, cultivated with seeds acquired from the CATIE agricultural research center. Passenger was fortunate to have the opportunity to buy a small amount of this coffee from the San Pablo project, featuring a blend of the gesha and “Ethiopia” varieties.

Many of the microlots produced at Santa Teresa are honey processed, as is common throughout Costa Rica. In contrast to a wet processed coffee, where some combination of fermentation and washing is employed to break down and ultimately remove the sugary mucilage that remains on the surface of coffee seeds after the fruit has been removed, honey processed coffee is dried immediately after pulping, with some amount of the mucilage left to dry on the coffee seeds. Skilled producers like Roger are able to carefully set up their pulping machines to leave more or less mucilage on the coffee prior to drying. A “white honey” indicates that almost all of the mucilage has been scraped off prior to drying, while a “red honey” or “black honey” would indicate that more mucilage was left on the seeds - which oxidizes to a darker hue during the drying process.

This gesha-Ethiopia field blend is described by the producer as a “yellow honey”. After careful cherry selection to ensure perfect ripeness, the fruit rests in a tank overnight before being passed through the mechanical pulping machine, which is set to remove about 75% of the mucilage. The coffee is then immediately dried on raised beds, and is turned frequently to ensure even drying over a period of 10-12 days.