SWD Costa Rica Aquiares

Aquiares Estate, more commonly known as “Aquiares Coffee and Community” is the largest coffee farm in Costa Rica and is home to 1,800 people.

Though the farm was founded in 1890, it would be nearly a century later before Alfonso Robelo, a refugee from Nicaragua, sought a new home for his family in costa Rica and arrived on this farmland.

In the 1990s, the farm began a campaign to improve home ownership in the local community. Each worker was given a bonus for their years of service and the farm gave assistance to people applying for government loans. Today 96% of the Aquiares employees own their own houses. The farm and the community are mutually connected. The farm provides services, land, security and honest jobs. In return, the coffee farm has benefited from a well-educated community and relies on highly skilled professionals from its community to continue functioning. Such a level of interdependence has helped contribute to the sense of pride that Aquiareños take in both our community and our coffee.

As the largest Rainforest Certified Coffee Farm in Costa Rica, it is a pioneer in sustainable practices applied on a large agricultural scale. In the past decades the farm has planted more than 50,000 shade trees, creating natural buffers around streams and water springs. It has worked to preserve the river valleys as forest, planting along the contours of the hills. The farm is also committed to carbon neutrality, and is part of Costa Rica’s Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action, which includes regular monitoring of greenhouse gas emissions.

This lot of peaberry is a washed coffee, dried on raised beds in a solar dryer for 18-24 days.