This coffee comes to us from the "Los Cuarteles” micro mill, located in the prolific León Cortés municipality. Mario and his family process this coffee without any demucilagination, giving it a heavy and expressive cup profile. Costa Rica's Micro Mills For a long time, Costa Rica has been well-known for its exemplary cooperatives, and it still is. Coops here are large, stable, supportive enterprises and part of a thriving environmentally-friendly agricultural sector that Costa Rica's federal government seriously supports. Despite the benefits of cooperative farming, a “micro-mill revolution” began in Costa Rica in the early 2000s, as small-scale centralized processing sites began emerging on family estates. This local entrepreneurship and access to select farms created a brand new market for Costa Rica. Individual farms became new brands, competition increased, higher prices ensued, and a range of cup profiles that Central America hadn’t seen before suddenly renewed the roasting world’s appreciation for Costa Rica’s potential. Los Cuarteles Los Cuarteles was formulated in 2014 by Mario Arraya Mora. Mario wanted the family farm to process their own coffee and have a higher value business to leave to his children. The microlots produced here are typically very mucilage-heavy honeys, since the mill does not have a demucilaginator—a type of pulper that uses extra water and friction to scrub away layers of mucilage during the pulping process. The resulting cups are heavy with sticky sweetness and body, but also very clean and fruit forward. Exclusive Coffees Exclusive Coffees, the exporter of Los Cuarteles coffee, focuses solely on quality assurance, marketing, and logistics for so-called “micro-mills”, and has deep relationships throughout Tarrazú as well as the West and Central Valleys, and Chirripó. Exclusive has cornered the market on this style of production in Costa Rica and manages a staggering volume of microlot coffees in a given harvest, cupping each and every outturn from their more than 50 micromill partners, for whom they provide quality feedback, processing input and collaboration, promotion to buyers, and all export logistics.
