Nestled in the beautifully lush region of Turrialba, Aquiares has been leading the way for speciality in Costa Rica. Home to around 1800 people, the farm is a home and very real community as well as a marvel of coffee production. An overwhelming majority of the farm's workers own their homes on the land and have a real stake in what they produce, an incredibly fresh approach by the head of the estate, Alfonso Robelo, who arrived to Turrialba in 1980.
Alfonso's son, Diego Robelo, was the first coffee producer I had a chance to meet almost a decade ago here in Edinburgh. Even then, Diego's passion and excitement at showcasing the plans for farming new hybrids and restoring the forest land around Aquiares was inspiring and left a lasting impression. It's truly an honour to share this coffee with Mutual's customers as roads converge again, years in the making.
This particular lot is comprised of the Centroamericano varietal, the very one Diego was most excited about all those years ago. Centroamericano H1 is an F1 hybrid variety generated by crossing the Sarchimor T-5296 and a wild Rume Sudan variety in a tissue culture cloning process called somatic embryogenesis. Centroamericano has now been distributed among coffee producers in Central America over the last decade and the first productive harvests have shown amazing potential. This hybrid represents the best of the farm and cupping worlds because it is high-yielding and rust-resistant yet also has a complex, elegant profile.
