Cupping Notes:  Mild intensity overall with softer fruit tones and notes of caramel, honey, and a mild finish.

Our friend Luz Marina Trujillo grew up in a family of coffee producers, and talks happily about spending her childhood playing with coffee beans instead of dolls. Now, she produces one of the finest coffees available on her estate Santa Elena in the highlands of Costa Rica’s most famous coffee growing region, Tarrazú. Luz Marina’s coffee is grown under shade, and the perfectly ripe cherries are hand picked, and sorted for quality at her own mill. The cherries are then carefully de-pulped, washed and dried slowly on the patios at Finca Santa Elena to fully develop acidity and depth of flavor. Additional care is given to her coffee in the “reposo” stage resting in parchment for at least 30 days after drying before being milled and shipped up to Atlas.

Like many of our favorite growers, Luz Marina takes a holistic approach to sustainability, minimizing synthetic inputs and utilizing a closed-loop fertilizing system that composts discarded coffee pulp using red-wiggler worms. Her water treatment system meets the Costa Rican government’s high environmental standards, and preserves the cleanliness of the river that flows through the estate. She offers her seasonal employees outstanding housing and health care, as well as a state of the art drinking water filtration system.

Tarrazú coffee is known for being crisp, clean, and bright, and Luz Marina’s coffee offers that classic profile plus a lightly syrupy body and sweetness, and an elegant finish. Luz Marina was one of the first estate owners in Costa Rica to produce Pulped Natural “Honey” (Miel) coffee in volume, adding a dimension of cotton candy and butterscotch to the sophisticated washed profile. In recent years Luz Marina has also been producing full natural process coffees, and separating lots from subdivisions of the large Santa Elena Estate, making for a dynamic list of offerings all from one exciting producer.