La Chumeca micro-mill is located in the beautiful San Pablo de León Cortés, part of the Tarrazú zone in Costa Rica. We were lucky enough to visit this coffee oasis for the first time back in 2018 and then again earlier this year as part of our sourcing trip with DR Wakefield (full trip report linked here).
La Chumeca is a family project started in 2014 by Martin Ureña Quirós which began with the intention of improving the quality of the coffee from the family farm. At first, the mill focused only on natural processing, but now more recently with anaerobic and other modern processing techniques. La Chumeca has become well known in Costa Rica for its quality coffees, many of which have featured on stage at national barista championships. Martin's two sons Pacho and Emilio are driving the business forward these days under his guidance. Emilio competed and won first place in the national 'Vandolo' championships (a Costa Rican brewing device) with one of their coffees.
The family’s property is the mill and contains a number of impressive spaces dedicated to production of coffee. Just a few meters from the entrance to their house is the “fermentation station,” consisting of a dozen stainless steel tanks lined up under a wooden structure. This space is monitored closely by mathematician and coffee farmer Emilio. Just past this fermentation space is a trail that leads through the forested area which acts as veins throughout the coffee fields. Beyond the trail is the drying space, surrounded by coffee trees and interlaced with immaculately maintained grass, flowers, and ponds. The drying area is overlooked by a tree house that has wonderful views of the drying beds, as well as the wide-stretching slopes of coffee full of Tarrazú character.
During this years trip we cupped a range of samples including this natural Geisha. A few stood out on the table and you'll be seeing some of these lots coming onto the offer list soon. We thought we'd go BIG with the first release and this Geisha is super fruity with just the right amount of boozy funk. Pacho reminded us of the details of the process and one of the keys for their coffees is the high Brix (sugar content) of the picked cherries at above 22 brix deg. Once picked the cherries are washed to remove any external contaminants then they go through a short oxidation process at an elevated temperature of between 35 and 40C. They do this to increase both the acidity and body in the cup, after which it is then taken to the raised (african) mesh drying beds for 21 days.
