Visiting the coffee country is always inspiring to me, and this year's trip was no different. It was especially nice to be able to see old faces and meet new ones, and in some cases attach a face to the name and voice we have been working with for these last three-plus years.

Walter Urena and Juan Ali (pictured, at right and left, respectively) are two such faces. Walter manages the roasting and shipping of Remy Sol Coffee, at the cooperative's roastery adjacent to the mill in Santa Maria de Dota, Costa Rica. It is he who coordinates the team to make sure each of your orders goes out on time, roasted perfectly to order, packaged by hand to meticulous standards, without a hitch. Walter is a true professional, supremely knowledgeable in all things coffee and all things related to the cooperative, and grace in motion as he attends to the various tasks of making sure all the pieces go together to get your coffee to you.

Above: Juan roasts each batch to order in a 30-kilo drum roaster configured to heat the chamber around the drum, for even heat, without flames marring the coffee. Juan Ali is the master roaster, and he approaches his job as an art. Juan is the first person we met at the cooperative when we stopped by on a Saturday morning almost four years ago and inquired about the coffee produced there. He has an incredible affinity for the Dota coffee, and to this date, roasts every batch by eye, nose and ear (listening for the "crack!" that signals certain stages of particular roasts). You likely have already noticed his narrower roast profile, in which medium is a little darker than usual, and espresso a little lighter. That comes from his long experience with this coffee, in which he has developed a roast profile that expresses the classic characteristics of these beans in each roast.

We visited this year at a time of torrential rains, when landslides and washouts were shutting down road routes all around the country. Coming from Ojai, where we barely have had an inch of rain, if that, all year, and where fires have been ranging in the tinder-dry landscape all around, rain was welcome. But everything is relative! In the Los Santos coffee country, more than once we heard locals wishing for an end to the rain.

The coffee is looking beautiful and robust this time of year. Branches are heavy with big clusters of still-green, still hard cherries. They will ripen slowly over the next few months, to be harvested when they are bright red and ripe beginning sometime in late December or early January.

Right now, farmers are concerned that the excessive rain will bring on the dreaded leaf rot, the "Ojo de Gallo" or "Rooster Eye." Farmers were watching their small plots carefully.

Left: A banana-shaded hillside coffee farm in Los Santos. Cooperative farmers are beginning to replace banana trees with the fuller shade, more nitrogen-rich Poro tree.

It was interesting to see some new investment on the part of many farmers. Farmers we met believe the price of top notch, distinctive coffee, such as what they produce in the higher altitude microclimates of Dota-Tarrazu, is going up. Outside of the cooperative we work with, we saw several farmers who are part of a trend to start micro-beneficios (small mills), something that is more doable today now that smaller scale milling equipment is a reality. This will create some new areas of interest in the next couple of years. For example, in the next small valley over, near the town of San Pablo, farmers are equally high in altitude, have similar cloud cover, and a similar volcanic soil, as in the Dota valley where our coffee is sourced. In the past, San Pablo farmers have sold their coffee each year to whichever of the mills around Dota-Tarrazu proper is paying the most. Their coffee would then be blended with other coffee processed at that mill, and the result likely be sold as Tarrazu-origin coffee.

Coffee Farmer Javier Meza farms about 10 hectares of coffee above San Pablo de Leon Cortes in the Los Santos region of Costa Rica. He is building a microbeneficio (small mill) to allow him to process his own coffee to offer directly to roasters in artisan lots.

Now that the farmers have seen that the best end of the market wants separate micro-lots of the most distinctive coffees, some see setting up their own micro-mills as an opportunity to separate and offer micro-lots of 100% their coffee. (This can only be a good trend for us coffee lovers. Perhaps soon we will be able to put their coffees to the test!)

The cooperative that produces Remy Sol Coffee continues to impress. They have now set up a small café where you can have some of the most delicious coffees and coffee drinks I've ever had. Look at the barista work in this mocha cappuccino (which was so delicious I became a convert, though my tastes usually stick only to black coffee).

The roastery is an artisan operation, with meticulous attention to detail at every step of the process. The roastery is strikingly clean and well organized. When our orders come in, the number of lbs., type of coffee and roasts are selected and laid out, bags and labels readied, and then the roast gets underway. Juan Ali selects the coffees, runs the roasters, and uses eyes, ears and nose, pulling samples at the critical moment from the small drum roaster, to measure just the right time to pull the coffee for each roast.

Pulling samples from the roaster to check for the perfect roast.	Releasing the roast at exactly the right time for quick air cooling is critical.	Roasted beans are air-cooled rapidly before being packed by hand.

After initial cooling, coffee is immediately bagged and labeled by hand. This seals the coffee in its still-emitting roast gasses, sealing the wonderful aroma that arrives at our doorstep shortly afterwards. I had that wonderful roast aroma in my nostrils for a week afterwards.

This visit also brought home the unique nature of what we are doing with Remy Sol Coffee. The farmers are roasting the coffee they grew and milled, to order, and shipping it direct. This means they are able to control every aspect of production of their coffee, until the final moment when you grind the roasted beans and brew a cup. (So don't mess up your brewing, because a lot of people have had a hand in getting it ready for you!)

Farmers receive a retail price, far more than any price available when they sell the green coffee, and far more than, for example, the certified "fair trade" price. They develop year-round income, leaving them less vulnerable during the yearly green coffee export season when they otherwise typically would be cash-strapped from the harvest and milling and in a weaker position to say no to a poor price. They also are able to get their coffee, in a pure, perfectly roasted form, to their ultimate customer, which means they can begin to develop retail demand for their unique coffee. (Believe me, in the coffee country, this is (small r) revolutionary.)

The result? We get to enjoy real Dota-Tarrazu coffee, as it is meant to be.

(There is a real difference. We recently had the opportunity to taste our cooperative's coffee as roasted by a top U.S.-based artisan roaster and green coffee importer. Kim and I both noted marked differences in aroma and flavor, mostly coming from the much lighter roast that was applied by the U.S. roaster. (It was also surprising to have so much more aroma coming from a bag of Remy Sol roasted a whole month before the bag we were comparing!))

Because roasting allows the farmers to have a direct market to their ultimate customer, and allows them to have a relationship with the final product of their labor (the roasted coffee, brewed in a cup), they can pay more attention to separation of micro-lots, and make direct connections between improvements in the field and mill and the demand for what is in your cup. The small scale also means that individual farmers can have the opportunity to reap the benefit of improved prices that come from distinctive coffee, which is something that suffers simply due to the economics when all farmers' coffee will be blended at source for a large exporter.

Bottom line, this means the farmers can truly focus on quality. Remy Sol Coffee is already excellent, but this visit showed me that it will only get better from here.

- Jeff Furchtenicht, November 5, 2007