Lorgy Cruz BV Costa Rica

What you will expect from the cup…

Orange, Honey, Jasmine Tea

Some Information...

Region: Los Santos

Farm: Lorgy Cruz BV

Altitude: 1850

Process: Honey

Varietal: Catimor

About the farm...

Lorgy Cruz grows coffee at 1,850 masl in Los Santos, the zone in the south of San José province covered by the Café Tarrazú denomination of origin. Her first memory of coffee is from when she was four, picking cherry into a tin from Dos Pinos, the Costa Rican dairy brand. She filled about four tins and was paid a peseta, worth 25 centavos.

She came to coffee on retiring, with a plot of land of her own. After a course on specialty coffee at INA, Costa Rica's Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje, she planted several microlots of varieties including Geisha, Bourbon and Catuaí. She then completed the Costa Rican Coffee Institute's (ICAFE) training from seed to cup and put it into practice. This lot is Catimor, processed as a honey at Terranova (CAAC).

The first challenge was social: coffee is mostly men's work, and she found herself up against established ideas. Economically, she has had to learn resilience. A family situation forced her to set aside her plan to open a café, and she competes in what she calls an overexploited market. Bean Voyage, a Costa Rican non-profit that provides training and market access to smallholder women producers, has given her the chance to focus and to look with determination at where she wants to go as an entrepreneur.