COSTA RICA | Las Lajas Micromill | Caturra & Catuai | Red Honey

Oscar and Francisca Chacón are third-generation coffee producers, but the coffee is more than just in their family heritage: It's in their hearts and souls as well. The couple is committed to quality and innovation and are among the very first farmers in Costa Rica to produce Honey and Natural process specialty coffee. 

Established by Oscar’s grandfather, Don Oscar Chacón Ugalde, the farm originally focused on a variety of agriculture types, consisting mostly of sugarcane and other subsistence crops, with some additional livestock. In the beginning, Oscar was focused providing food for his family to eat. It wasn’t until the 1950s that Don Oscar began planting coffee, as a cash crop. Commercial coffee production was new to Costa Rica, and Don Oscar fell in love with coffee, slowly switching the focus of the farm to include more and more coffee. What started on 3 hectares of land, has grown to over 50 hectares today.  
In 2005, after years of delivering their cherry to a cooperative, they decided to join the brand-new "micromill revolution" and buy their own depulper to have more control over the quality and the price they received for their lots. Necessity bred more innovation for the family when an earthquake in 2008 wiped out electricity and water to their area during the harvest. Unable to run the depulpers or to wash the mucilage off to produce Washed lots, Francisca took inspiration from her knowledge of African coffee production and quickly built raised beds on the property. Their Natural lots quickly caught the attention of coffee buyers around the world.