El Coyote Typica Red Honey

Alejandro and Horacio Solis are two giants among men. Ale and Tacho, as everyone calls them, started their micromill Don Oscar in 2014, and we've been buying from them since day one.

The mill is named after their dad. Oscar Solis was the first farmer in the family, and for most of his life he picked cherries and sold them to the local co-op. The co-op paid by weight. It didn't care about variety and it didn't care how carefully anything was picked, because it all went into one big regional blend where terrible coffee and incredible coffee ended up in the same bag. That was how most of Costa Rica worked until around 2010, when small farmers started buying their own equipment and processing their coffee at home. Suddenly a farm could sell its coffee under its own name and get paid for how good it actually was.

That's exactly what Ale and Tacho did. Oscar passed away in 2017, three years after his sons opened the mill that carries his name.

They're in Canet, in Tarrazú, and it is gorgeous there. The mill and their main farm sit in a valley ringed by lush, dramatic mountains, and all of it is covered in coffee.

They started with just about nothing. They had a small farm and really basic equipment, and they just started milling their own coffee. Everything the business makes goes straight back into it, and every season there's something new: better infrastructure, more land, new varieties, better drying. These days they produce a surprising amount of coffee for a small operation, and they process every bit of it meticulously. Growing how much you make while also getting better at it is rare, and they've pulled it off.

This lot is a yellow honey Typica from El Coyote, their prized farm, at over 2000m. Typica is one of the oldest coffee varieties around, and it's not an easy one to grow: it yields less and it's more delicate than most, which is why so many farms moved away from it. Ale and Tacho planted it in 2018 anyway, and it took five years before it produced anything. Worth the wait. It's an elegant and very tasty coffee, with delicate florals and soft peach notes that really stood out on the cupping table.

Over the years I've passed along ideas I've seen on other farms, and they've taken on a lot of them. That's the thing about these two: they look in the mirror and all they see is what they can do better. They should be a lot prouder of what they've built than they are, and I'm stoked to be working with them.