Costa Rica Kaffa Jimma Honey - Coffea Diversa

Roast: Light 

Country: Costa Rica

Region: Biolley

Producer: Coffea Diversa

Processing: Honey

Altitude: 1250-1300masl

Taste:

A complex cup with flavor notes more in common with an Ethiopian coffee than a Costa Rican one. Honey, Jasmine, Kaffir Lime. Lively acidity brings the citrus notes to the forferont. The coffee finishes with a caramel-like sweetness.

Background Info

Gonzalo Hernandez likes to brag that he’s amassed the world’s largest private collection of coffees trees: more than two hundred species, botanical varieties, mutations and cultivars that grow on his exotic Costa Rican “coffee garden”, Coffea Diversa. His collection includes some of the rarest in the world -- coffees many have neither heard of nor tasted.

Of each variety Gonzalo has only a few trees, and his coffees are sold in small 10 kilogram bags to knowledgeable roasters and friends around the world, first come, first serve. We first visited Coffea diversa and met Gonzalo 10 years ago, and we’ve been looking forward to sharing these ever since.

 While there are hundreds of varieties that have been collected from coffee's homeland in the mountains of Ethiopia, only a handful of these have ever been commercially cultivated.   Only the Geisha and Java varieties are currently planted in any significant scale. With others such as Chiroso, Sidra, Wush Wush, Colombian Pink Bourbon being planted in  only a few growing regions. Many others exist and Coffea Diversa has a collection of dozens not being grown anywhere else. 

Kaffa Jimma is a variety collected from northern Jimma in the southwest of Ethiopia. It is a tall stature plant, with long spacing between the branches and main stem, medium spacing between the branch nodes and the young leaves are green. It is a low productivity plant.

Ghimbi is a wild Ethiopian variety collected from near the village of Ghimbi in Southwest of Ethiopia in the Oromia region. It is a tall stature plant with wide spacing between the branches and nodes, which results in a low producing plant. Young leaves are reddish in color.