Coffee Advent Calendar Day 18 - Costa Rica Aquiares
Coffee Advent Calendar: Aquiares Esperanza
NOTES: Mandarin, Chocolate, Caramel
ROAST: Medium
Aquiares means “land between rivers” in the Huetar language — the tongue of the indigenous people native to the Turrialba region. Turrialba holds a special place in our family’s story: our father managed a macadamia plantation there, intercropped with coffee, for over a decade during the 1990s. My sister and I spent many days in that rainy, humid valley — a modest agricultural town surrounded by coffee farms and sugarcane fields.
Turrialba is also home to CATIE (the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center), one of Central America’s premier institutions for crop research and development. It houses one of Latin America’s largest living coffee variety collections. In fact, the Geisha grown on our family’s farm in El Salvador originated from CATIE’s seed collection, which we sourced back in 2015.
The Aquiares Estate is one of Costa Rica’s largest and most renowned coffee farms, home to more than 1,800 people. Founded in 1890, the estate has flourished under the care of Alfonso Robelo and now his son, Diego. Alfonso relocated to Costa Rica in the 1980s, escaping Nicaragua’s civil war, and made Aquiares his home. Over the decades, the Robelo family has transformed the farm into a model of carbon-neutral coffee production and excellence in processing.
The coffee we’re featuring comes from the Esperanza variety — a rare F1 hybrid created by crossing Sarchimor T-5296 with a wild Ethiopian (ET25) variety. It’s reproduced through tissue-culture cloning and is produced commercially by only a handful of farms worldwide. This lot was mechanically washed and slowly dried on raised beds in a solar dryer for over 18 days.
We roasted this coffee to highlight its rich cacao nib and chocolate notes while preserving its bright citrus character. Expect a lively splash of lemon and mandarin, balanced by a smooth chocolate finish and a gentle caramel sweetness.
- Country: Costa Rica
- Region: Turrialba, Cartago Province
- Producers: Robelo Family
- Altitude: 1,200 masl
- Varietals: Esperanza (F1 Hybrid)
- Process: Washed
