Costa Rica Seilyn Jimenez

In Seilyn's own words: "[En comprar nuestros cafes] Realizan un efecto mariposa inimaginable, logrando impactar vidas, personas, familias y no solo económicamente, porque al lograr tener mejor calidad de vida los seres humanos logramos crecer integralmente.

 "[When you buy our coffee it] creates an unprecedented butterfly effect that impacts the lives of individuals and families and not just economically. Achieving this greater quality of life allows us to grow more wholly."

A stunner coffee with a social impact, Seilyn's coffee is about as Grand Coffee as it gets. When we go searching for new coffees, we are guided as much by our principles as we are our palates. Empowering folks along the production chain who don't have access to resources or are otherwise overlooked is of utmost importance to us, and that brought us to work with Bean Voyage, a non-profit organization working exclusively with women smallholder farmers in Costa Rica and Mexico. Bean Voyage employs a business incubator model, called Care Trade, to support these women and give them the resources and information to improve their growing practices and make growing coffee a more lucrative venture for themselves.

Oftentimes with similar cooperative-minded partners, the coffee we purchase is a mix of the crops of many different producers representing a whole community at once. Bean Voyage goes a step further, however, and links indivdual growers to roasters across the world to give their coffees an opportunity to shine as revered "single origin" coffees coming from one country, one region, one farmer. Building these direct, longer-term relationships is key to Bean Voyage's model of creating a support system for their producers.

We knew we wanted a stunner coffee when we started tasting coffees from Bean Voyage, and we're so happy to settle with this offering from their producer partner Seilyn Jimenez. Seilyn's family has grown coffee for over 20 years, but they moved to establish a processing mill, Abuelos Cafe, in 2019 to further improve the quality of their coffee and those of other producers in Tarrazu. After just a few years of hard work, learning, and dedication, they are realizing great success in both sales and quality of the coffee they produce.

This lot that we have purchased, Seilyn's own, is a testament to this quality. This naturally processed coffee still leaves us floored when we try it. It's a complex cup, bursting with the sweetness of dried fruits and pineapples backed by a pleasant acidity. The cup evolves, however, and takes on a more serious tone as it glides across the palate. A touch of astringency marks the other side of this coffee's personality, as it morphs into something with the structure and tawny nature of fino sherry. This is a coffee that will reaffirm your love for specialty coffee or open your eyes to great spectrum of flavors coffee can hold when extra care and attention is paid to producing something spectacular.