Marago is a natural mutation of Typica and it’s known for being a very expressive coffee variety, although due to its unusually large size, it’s a harder variety to process well.

The Hartman family is made up of four brothers and a sister, their spouses and their grand or their children. Their grandfather Alois Strasil Hartmann first mountaineered through the Santa Clara region in the late 1800s. He found a remote, beautiful, fertile, forest enclosed region that would later become Finca Hartmann. Alois’ son, Ratibor “Chico” Hartmann was responsible for growing the plantation and establishing Finca Hartmann as a coffee farm.  Chico’s children now run the farm.

Chico passed in 2016, but years before his passing, he sat his Children down and gave them two options on how to move forward. Option one was the traditional way of dividing the land up by five and each sibling doing their own independent thing. Option two was to keep the land intact and have them work as a team, each focusing on their own strength. They chose…drumroll… option two.

OK, so let’s talk about this coffee. It’s grown at 1350m, which should just be an average coffee that you drink and forget about. It should be nothing special, yet it’s amazing coffee. So, what’s their secret?

First, the coffee plants. It’s no secret that Maragogype thrives in the Hartmann farm. Second, they've taken these plants and they've given them lots of care and nurture. When I walk through the farm, the trees are some of the happiest and healthiest I've seen. Then when it's time to pick, they're super punctual. Everyday during the harvest, they find the plot of land that has the most ripe cherry and pick that day.

And then in the processing, this is where this coffee begins to shine. The coffee was naturally processed, but rather than leaving the drying to chance, the Hartmanns dried it by dehydration in their custom built dark rooms. This is by far and away the best way to dry coffee.

The result of all this hard work is a coffee that makes your eyes pop and question what just happened in your mouth (in a good way).