Calderón Family

  • Micromill / Farms

    Los Angeles / Don Cayito, Vendabal, Los Angeles / Don Cayito, Vendaval, La Estrella, La Granadilla, Los Girasoles, Las Flores, La Casa, Bisunga, Cedral, Las Nubes, El Colegio, Romero, Cayito, Quebrada Grande

  • Country

    Costa Rica

  • Region

    Santa Maria de Dota, Tarrazu

  • Varieties

    catuaí, geisha, typica mejorada

  • Crop

    January - April

  • Awards

    1st place CoE 2022, 3rd place CoE 2025

  • Cooperation

    Since 2016

Calderón Family

The whole family is involved in growing coffee - father Ricardo, mother Lourdes and all the children, Michael, Liz, Diego and Fernanda.

Los Angeles - Calderón family
Los Angeles - Calderón family
Los Angeles - Calderón family
Los Angeles - Calderón family
Los Angeles - Calderón family
Los Angeles - Calderón family

Farm

The Calderón family owns more than 15 farms around the town of Santa Maria. Since 2017, we have been focusing on one farm when buying coffee, namely Don Cayito. This is the highest farm, at 2100 m above sea level, where the family grows three different varieties of coffee - catuaí, typica mejorada and geisha.

Don Cayito is also the most famous farm of the Calderón family of all. It regularly participates in the Cup of Excellence competition, where it has achieved significant successes - 3rd place in 2017, 1st place in 2018, 2nd place in 2019, 3rd place in 2020 and another 1st place in 2022. They achieved all these successes with the Geisha variety, which still holds the record for the price per pound of coffee offered at auction, namely 300.09 USD. In 2018, they also won second place with the typica mejorada variety. With the money from the competition, they purchased an optical sorter for green coffee, which further improved the sorting process and thus the resulting quality of their coffee.

Don Cayito owes its unique flavor profile to the quality soil with plenty of nutrients. Diego, who is responsible for this farm, also claims that it is thanks to other trees that are planted here among the almost 15 thousand coffee trees. You can find avocados, oranges, grapefruits, guavas and tree tomatoes.

Getting to the farm is quite difficult. There is only a steep dirt road that can be overcome only by a truck or a homemade jeep, which is made up of at least four others. We saw a steering wheel from a Toyota, a lever from a Jeep, seats from a Mitsubishi and a winch from a Range Rover.

Producer

The Calderón family could be considered matadors in coffee growing. Ricardo Calderón founded the first farm in 1975 under the name La Granadilla. Since then, the Calderón family has worked to increase their coffee yields. In the past, the only way to increase profits was to increase production. Coffee cherries (harvested, unprocessed coffee) were bought by so-called cooperatives at prices determined by the current price on the coffee commodity market, regardless of their quality or ripeness.

However, this changed in the years 2009 - 2011, when the so-called micro mill revolution took place in Costa Rica. Farmers learned to build their own small processing stations and began to produce coffee under their own name. Thanks to this, they had control over the entire processing process, which had a huge impact on increasing the quality of the coffee produced. The higher quality was immediately reflected in the higher purchase price. And the Calderóns are among the most successful in Costa Rica in this regard.

In the last few years, in addition to their processing plant, they have also managed to build their own mini-laboratory where they roast coffee samples from their harvests, and are thus able to taste the coffees they offer to their partners, including us, right on site.

They even founded their own roastery called Don Cayito. Their packages are inspired by our limited edition packages. Thanks to it, they have the opportunity to sell part of their harvest directly at the local market or in their own café that they built.

In 2018, they installed solar panels on the roof of the Los Angeles plant and are currently able to cover 65% of their energy consumption from their own sources.

Processing

Beneficio Los Angeles processes coffee in the typical Costa Rican way, using all honey methods. Colombian eco-peelers Penagos are used to peel the cherries, which remove the pulp with minimal use of water. After peeling the coffee, it travels to concrete patios, where it is dried until the final moisture content is 9-13%. This takes several days to weeks, depending on the weather and the humidity, which is around 80% here in Santa Maria all year round. In case of bad weather, the coffee is dried in hot-air dryers, called guardiolas, which use parchment from the peeled coffee as fuel.

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Fun • Don Cayito

Costa Rica
600 Kč
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