Plum Runner

Santa Lucia is a farm that’s near and dear to me. It’s owned by Ricardo Perez and named after his elder daughter Lucia. Ricardo believes in clean, eco-friendly and regenerative farming and Santa Lucia is a great example of it. It’s lush, has tons of banana and plantain trees scattered through the farm with wild berry trees surrounding the coffee farm.

It’s crazy to think that it’s been over 15 years since we began working with Ricardo Perez and his famous mill: Helsar. Helsar is a quality focused wet mill that historically produces two types of coffees. The first is a blend of small producers from the region – a blend they call “Helsar”. And the second type are very small lots from Ricardo’s farm Santa Lucia, separated by variety and processing method. This lot is from the latter.

This lot went through a red honey process, meaning that the coffee was immediately depupled, but all of the mucilage (also known as honey in Spanish) is left on. During the drying process, this “honey” turns red (giving the name red honey) and the bean and surrounding honey become super sweet. The result is a supercharged sweet coffee that is still round and balanced.

This year the quality was very high – Ricardo thinks it has to do with last year being a very low harvest and the trees being very healthy and looking happy. The picking this year was especially good, again leading to more sweetness and complexity in the cup. When I cupped it in March in Costa Rica, it reminded me of why I first fell in love with coffees from Helsar – brown sugar, apricots, milk chocolate, plum jam, honey – who doesn’t like to drink that, right?

Ricardo is a legend in the Costa Rica coffee producing world. Once a 100% certified organic farmer, he now opts for sustainable farming practices and has dropped the organic certification since it doesn’t really help him sell his coffee and it has a very high cost for him, as a small producer. Ricardo is a gem of a human, not only interested in producing quality, but equally moved by helping his neighbouring producers and improving his community. If only the world had more folks like Ricardo…