Monte Alto. Café De Costa Rica

Highlights

“Monte Alto is grown by Gerardo Arias Camacho in Tarrazú, one of Costa Rica's best known coffee regions, where altitude, climate and volcanic soils shape the identity of the cup. This Venecia lot comes from 1,500 to 1,800 m, on a farm of roughly 30 hectares that Gerardo runs alongside Casa de Piedra (about 50 hectares), both on andisol soils of volcanic origin in the districts of San José and San Francisco de León Cortés. He handles cultivation and processing himself, keeping control of every stage and looking to express the character of his origin — a mountainous setting with marked day-to-night temperature swings, where cherries ripen gradually and build complexity. For this lot the Venecia variety, an arabica developed in Costa Rica and adapted to local growing conditions, is picked selectively by hand from February to April. After reception, cherries are sorted by ripeness and given a pre-fermentation, then pulped and fermented aerobically for 72 to 95 hours, with oxygen present, so microbial activity transforms compounds in the mucilage. The beans are then washed clean and dried in the open air until moisture reaches safe storage levels. It is a washed coffee with a longer fermentation, aiming at complexity without losing varietal expression or the fruit-acid balance typical of Tarrazú.”