Presenting Purchase Planning: Costa Rica 2023
An Educational Resource for Your Important Purchasing Decisions
Welcome to Purchase Planning 2023 – a tool designed with you in mind to create a smooth and informed purchasing process. This page provides educational context around Costa Rica’s coffee production and insight into our relationships, programs, and the current harvest. We believe in empowering our roasting partners to plan ahead for each country’s harvest. This provides first access to a wider variety of fresh crop lots and the assurance of coverage until the following harvest season.
We recognize that a roaster’s selections should be based on real-time information and are proud to provide this to you. Cafe Imports’ sales representatives, who work closely with our green buyers at origin, are excited to provide expert guidance through your purchasing decisions.
We hope you find this tool educational, timely, and practical. Take a look, and then contact us to begin planning your Costa Rica offerings for 2023.
Earlier Posts
Introducing: Oxcart Coffee – Cafe Imports Latin America
Traditional oxcarts, or carretas, are one of the most prominent national symbols of Costa Rica, and they call back to the country’s long, proud history with coffee. That longevity and pride, as well as quality in work and deed, is the reason we chose the same symbol...
A Dispatch from Honduras about Cafe Imports’ Partnership with Trees, Water & People
When you break down the work we do into three absolutely basic elements, what do you get? Trees, water, and people—right? After all, what is a coffee plant but a tree; water is necessary not only for growing and processing coffee but also brewing; and without people, well, need we say more? Considering the incredible significance of this natural trilogy, it makes perfect sense that we have partnered with an organization called Trees, Water & People in order to maintain our carbon-neutral status and to attempt to “leave no trace” as a business in a resource-thirsty global industry.
Best Cup 2018, Bigger and Better: Colombia and Carmo de Minas
A few times every year we pile into a chiva with 20 or 30 of our roaster friends from around the world, drive into the heart of a coffee-growing community, cup for days and days, and discover some of the most exquisite microlot coffees in the world by ranking the top 30 out of hundreds of submitted samples. Then we all wake up on the last day of a long week and top the whole thing off with a wild and wooly live auction, surrounded by dozens of coffee growers and their families in a sea of auction paddles, music, food, tears, and camaraderie…
Introducing Cafe Imports’ Ethiopia Sourcing Office, Addis Ababa
Ethiopian coffees are near and dear to our hearts, so it’s only fitting that we at Cafe Imports should want to be near and dear to the heart of Ethiopian coffee: This year, we’re happy to announce the establishment of the Cafe Imports Ethiopia Sourcing Office in Addis Ababa, which will operate during and post-harvest and will serve as a hub for our cupping, purchasing, and developmental operations in East Africa.
Understanding Fermentation and Coffee
Humans love fermented foods so much you’d think we’d have pickled ourselves by now: We can’t seem to get enough bread, sauerkraut, wine, yogurt, cheese, chocolate, or, of course, coffee. Well, coffee’s not a fermented beverage per se, but fermentation does play a part in the creation of this drink we love, and since we are insatiably curious about every step in the process we have attempted to learn and absorb as much as we can about the importance and the impact of fermentation on coffee quality and flavor. Click here to read more about what we’ve discovered in our reading, research, and experience.
Origin Report: Tanzania 2018
“We love a challenge” might just be a cliché for some, but when it comes to sourcing coffee in Africa, it’s definitely true that some of our very favorite growing regions are also hands down the most complicated. One of the countries in which we’re just starting to have a more engaged buying presence is in Tanzania, an East African coastal country that shares borders with Kenya to the northeast, and Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda in the northwest.
Origin Report: Colombia 2018
Colombia is a home away from home for us, and we travel there so often it almost feels more like a regular commute than a big-deal coffee trip these days. This year, maybe more than ever, it’s been especially important for us to spend time and share physical space with our producer partners, as continued weather disruptions and a tumbling market threaten to cause a crisis of confidence. Here’s our latest dispatch from the harvest currently underway in Huila and Nariño.
A Note from Cafe Imports about the C Market
In response to many of the questions, concerns, and conversations happening in the global specialty-coffee community lately, we wanted to take a moment to share what we know and how we feel about the current state of the C Market.
Origin Report: Indonesia 2018
A look at the diversity and difficulty of sourcing in Indonesia, one of our favorite far-flung coffee origins.
Aces Are Wild!
We don’t Ace just anything: Coffees sold through our Aces program are the kinds of exceptional lots that make even us shout, “Wow!” Read more about how you can sign up to receive Aces alerts and have early-bird access to some of the most exquisite, exclusive coffees on earth.
Origin Report: Nicaragua 2018
We are in love with Nicaragua, and when we fall for a place, we fall hard. Over the past couple of years, our focus has been on the small specialty producers of Dipilto in Nueva Segovia, nurturing relationships that display huge potential, as well as a continued commitment to the cooperatives with whom we’ve enjoyed strong, stable partnerships for years. While the past few months have been especially hard on the people of this beautiful country, we have found much to celebrate in the highland farms and with the growing specialty-coffee sector: We bet that by the end of this report, you’ll be just as in love—and just as devoted—as we are.
Minneapolis AeroPress Championship
Join us on August 31 for the Bold North regional AeroPress competition!