20 Tons from Costa Rica! Wild.

Our list has become pretty Costa Rica heavy over the past 18 months. This is something I never thought I’d hear myself say.

Buying heavily from Costa Rica isn’t the most obvious choice for a coffee roaster of our size, it’s not really an obvious choice for any UK coffee roaster. It is a great origin, with some of the best soil, climactic conditions, and coffee infrastructure in the world. But this, along with its stability and high living standard - compared with the most of Central America - makes it typically more expensive than other neighbouring markets. It's usually a bit of a treat.

So why is half our offer list (including our Players Blend) Costa Rican? Well that’s thanks to Aquiares, Diego Robelo, Algrano, and Harley Butcher.

It started a couple of years back with Tom at Algrano... Algrano is kinda like right-move for coffee producers - producers can list their lots on there, buyers can find them, then Algrano will finance and ship them for you. It’s a slight departure from the usual exporter model, allowing producers to set their own prices and list their harvest as they see fit, but otherwise it’s pretty typical. Anyway, we buy a lot through them, so Tom thought he’d bring some Aquiares coffees to our attention.

We ordered samples, and by the time they’d arrived all the Aquiares lots were sold out… bummer.

We then saw the name Aquaires pop up on Ally’s offer list. They had the totally mental Thermic “Churro” Natural available so we picked it up. It was the most expensive coffee we’d ever purchased at the time at about £15p/kg green, but it was nuts so we went in. I think this was the first “expensive” coffee we ever sold in any substantial volume. It definitely got us noticed by a few industry people who’d never paid us mind before, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

So yeah, we bought a fancy lot from Aquiares, and everyone loved it…

Then, unbeknown to me, Harley started pestering Tom for contact details. In no time at all he was name dropping his new mate Diego. Nobody really paid him any mind, he’s always saying things without context. Next thing you know Costa Ricas started arriving, they were good too. Turns out Harley’s mate Diego was Diego Robelo (Manager and producer at Aquiares).

After about a year of relentless banging coffees coming from Diego I managed to jump on skype call with him and Harley… here’s the first question I asked:

Jasper: “I'm asking you Diego, how’s it been dealing with Harley Man?”

Diego: “It’s been great because we’ve had, what, five or six long conversations now? I’ve really made an effort to take notes from each one—maybe not today since I’m in the car—but I try to follow through and understand what you find valuable.

Harley also sent me the coffee from Rwanda and Nicaragua, which really helped put things into perspective. It gave me a better sense of the expectations for the products you’re already buying and helped us get calibrated, which is very important.

One thing I appreciate is that you’re not the type to try to squeeze every last cent out of a deal. We price our coffees with the belief that a single sale at an amazing price isn’t nearly as valuable as a long-term, sustainable partnership over 10 or 20 years. There’s no real gain in making a one-time sale at a high price if it means not selling again.

So, the goal is to find the right balance—where the value of our coffee is justified both in terms of quality and price. That’s always been a fair conversation with Harley. And you’ve been flexible too—willing to explore new coffees while staying consistent with the ones you love.

I remember the first coffee you got from us was the Thermic, and you really loved it. We continued with that, but you also branched out. You were actually one of the few clients who reordered that really funky anaerobic honey—the one that tastes like olives! A lot of people said it was their favourite because it was so unique, but you actually followed through and bought it again. That meant a lot.”

It’s so fucking sick guys… we’ve got so much great coffee from this relationship. Here’s a list of everything we’ve bought/released so far:

I could now go on to tell you all about Aquiares Estate, but that would be long and I've not been there myself... you can go and stay there, I reckon it'd be a mint holiday! Check out their website for all the info: https://www.aquiares.com/our-story

So much so good! Adios amigos!x