Description

The Community Coffee program with CoopeTarrazú has allowed us to separate out lots from specific communities within the area of León Cortés, encouraging the cooperative to increase its attention to traceability and increasing the opportunities that small producers will have to achieve recognition for their coffees. There is a premium paid for the extra work and attention that goes into these coffees, and that premium supports the entire cooperative, as an incentive to continue these types of labor-intensive but worthwhile programs and projects.

While some of the best individual producers in Costa Rica have built their own micromills to segregate their coffee and capture the higher market for microlots, many smallholder producers of high caliber do not have their own facilities, and still deliver cherry to cooperatives. This is where CoopeTarrazú comes in. The communities themselves represent collection centers in and aroundLeón Cortés in Tarrazú, where producers from nearby towns will deliver their coffee in cherry form for grading, sorting, and processing. CoopeTarrazú does all of its drying in mechanical driers, after depulping and fermenting the coffee dry before washing.

For more information about coffee production in Costa Rica, visit our Costa Rica page.