Field Trip to Costa Rica with André Robitaille, part two and the end

As you probably already know, we made a quick (but intense!) visit to a coffee plantation in Costa Rica at the end of December. We went to the "Coope Tarrazu" farm to taste and buy the coffee we use to produce the coffee featured on the show Entrée Principale. Accompanied by André Robitaille and his trusty cameraman, we spent two days on the plantation, showing André and all the viewers the complex process that coffee goes through to reach our cups.

Thus, you have already been able to read on our site a first blog about the plantation and the incredible landscape that surrounds it, and another more specifically about the harvesting of the fruit and its pulping.

Finally, we meet one last time to talk about the coffee tasting process once it has been roasted, and also to talk about the people who run the plantation with passion, respecting both people and nature.

How to taste coffee: the "cupping" technique

This video gives us a glimpse into the very precise process that tasters must follow to extract maximum aroma from the coffee they are testing. Here, we're talking about standards established by a near-global organization, the Specialty Coffee Association of America . For those of you who are curious, you can even follow the video and the SCAA's guidelines to reproduce the process at home!

Finca Las Lajas, a family affair

The video below features a meeting with Francesca and Oscar, the owners of Finca Las Lajas. Here, you can feel the passion these coffee producers have for YOUR coffee, the respect they have for their product, and also for the nature that sustains them. You can also sense their anxieties: the pressure of climate change and stock market fluctuations, as well as the growing concern about the lack of new generations of farmers in Costa Rica.

And then we can even see their emotion, at the very end, when André announces to them that their café is helping to support the Philou Centre.

A beautiful story that concludes here!