I would like to share with you an incident that happened recently. A very good customer was very disappointed to find out that our his coffee of choice… Costa Rican Helsar de Zarcero was sold out. Before I could explain he walked out of the cafe in apparent disgust. There is a a lot of talk these days about the seasonality of coffees. Like many agricultural products, coffee, depending on the country of origin is harvested at different times of the year. Lets look at our Helsar de Zarcero. Coffees in Costa Rica are harvested between December and March. After the coffees have been harvested, they need to be depulped, washed, dryed, sorted, and finally shipped to consuming countries. Coffee is a fruit, well actually its the seed of the fruit, so while we tend to purchase fruit that is in season, coffee also has a “season”. While we try to purchase as many coffees as we can that have been packaged in special grain pro bags or even better in Vac Packs as most of our Cup of Excellence coffees are packaged. Coffee is at its best within 10 months from harvest. We have just recieved current crop Gutemalans. Our fresh Costa Rican should arrive within the next two to three weeks. While we could have found other coffees from Costa Rica, they would have been somewhat “tired”, not as vibrant, and we would rather offer a substitute like our recent Brazilian coffees that are in “season”.
jd