Costa Rica Vara Blanca

The Valverde family began with a 1 hectare coffee farm in 2000 in the lush coffee valley of Santa Maria de Dota in the Tarrazú region of Costa Rica. Their coffee was sold as cherry to the local cooperative, Coopedota, then later sold as a regional blend. Over the years, the volume of coffee in Costa Rica has diminished due to decreasing coffee prices. For many families working in agriculture, the next generation is less interested in coffee farming as their viable career. Instead, many people go to college, move to the capital city of San Jose, and look for work in offices or other non-agricultural professions. By contrast, in 2016 the Valverde family established a new coffee business, called Hermanos Valso, with complete focus on producing the highest quality coffees. They built a micro-mill on their farm, Vara Blanca, to process their coffee which includes Honey and Natural Process coffees. Ernesto Jose Valverde Solis, a second generation Valverde family farmer, built the micro-mill and raised beds to slowly dry coffee in the sun and under a large solar dryer. On the farm, coffee pickers select only the ripest cherries, sometimes making up to five passes during the harvest. Vara Blanca has now expanded to 7 hectares, adding new varieties of Milenio (higher yield F1 hybrid) and Catigua. They recently purchased a new farm in Copey, an area very close to Tarrazú, and planted an additional 500 trees of different coffee varieties. Since our last visit, they have built a warehouse to store parchment during the harvest for their two farms, added a second depulper to the wet mill, and upgraded the raised drying beds for processing honeys and naturals. This coffee is a Yellow Honey, meaning that instead of being fully washed, a small amount of fruit mucilage is kept on the parchment layer while the coffee dries. This process helps to yield sweeter and creamier coffees with mild fruit characteristics.