In January, Emily and I traveled with a few customers to Costa Rica. Once again, we were lucky to have our good friends from The Coffee Source as our hosts and guides.

We spent the first day traveling within the Central Valley to Poas and the Doka Estate. This is an award-winning coffee that we have carried for several years, so it was great for those of us who had never seen the estate. We had a wonderful lunch at Doka and then traveled just a few miles away to La Hilda Estate. Both of these Estates were fairly quiet as the harvest in Costa Rica was about a month early this year.

The second day we visited a very nice estate called La Laguna in the region of Trés Rios. We were surprised to see the extent of development in this well known coffee region. The new real estate developments are literally bordering some of the larger coffee plantations. La Laguna happens to be one of the oldest estates in the region dating back to the early 1800s. The wet mill is actually housed in one of the original buildings. This is a beautiful estate with alot of history as well as some very state-of-the-art sorting equipment. The afternoon of the second day was spent traveling to the region of Tarrazu and the small town of Santa Maria.

After an incredible home cooked meal at a local establishment, we walked across the street to the Dota cooperative. Dota was established in 1960 by a small group of farmers in the region and is now represented by more than 700 growers. This cooperative has a long standing reputation for producing some of the best coffee in the country and is now run by Roberto Mata, the son of the original director. It was great for all of us to see coffee processing on a very large scale from very small producers. Dota is a great example of the cooperative coffee system at work in terms of fair prices, environmental concern, and coffee quality. After a long day in Tarrazu, we rode back through the clouds to our hotel in San José.

The third day, we continued our tradition of the canopy tour, where everyone conquered their fears and flew high above rivers and water falls through the rainforest canopy. For those of you who have considered one of these zip-line tours, but haven’t had the opportunity, we strongly suggest going for it! We spent the last evening discussing our travels and coffee issues over an incredible meal and strong drinks on an outdoor patio...perfect!

We would like to thank our friends at The Coffee Source, as well as our customers from Dry Creek Coffee in Hill City, S.D., Roaster Direct and Caffe Amoré in the Twin Cities, Great River Roasters in Pepin, WI., and Burgies Espresso in Ames, IA., for joining us on this incredible adventure.

—Matt Hupton (Matt@cafeimports.com)