Costa Rica El Alto

Santos Lopez, the father of this family moved to Tarrazu from the North-Western Region of Costa Rica called Guanacaste in 1985. When he moved to Tarrazu he didn’t own any land and he worked for other farmers in the town of Santa Cruz. It wasn’t until after he got married and had children that he finally bought his first piece of land in Tarrazu. The Lopez Gamboa family has been growing their own coffee since the early 90’s in the same small town of Santa Cruz. Historically, they picked the coffee along with their seasonal workers who come from Panama to help in the fields during every harvest; and then delivered those cherries to a local Cooperative which processed and sold the finished green coffee product to different markets. In the harvest of 2017 the Lopez Gamboa family decided to start, Passiflora, their own micro mil. This came as a result of the low and unsustainable c-market prices they were receiving from the cooperative as well as their desire to innovate, add value to their product, and become some of the best quality farmers in the region. Emmanuel, Santos’ son, studied to be an agronomist at a university in the city, but he made the difficult decision to come back home and continue helping his family with the plantation and the micro mill. They are still very young in the world of specialty coffee, yet are learning very quickly. We have seen big improvements since the first year they started processing their own coffee and we were lucky enough to get a glimpse into their bright future on our cupping table.