You are ushered outdoors and toward cafe tables stationed beside heaters beneath tents. Here, in the shade of the buildings, you feel February creep up over you, brisk and shivery as you are used to. Don’t be too bristled. Lean back, tip your head up: in the sunlight—luminous and arching like a sheet thrown out across the sky—you are warm like there’s a bulb humming from within the cage of your chest.
Waiters in chartreuse uniforms deliver silver trays topped with petite cups of cappuccinos (but only before twelve) cradled by sugar packets and tiny chocolates and plates of cornetti. You will try to reply in Italian, and they might understand you, or they will ask you very nicely not to bother, and you will be humbled and slightly humiliated. Here is the scene: your slumped shoulders and your nervous posture and the heat of the espresso and the taste of the chocolate and the man pacing the sidewalk and the American music circa 1980s thumping and traffic streaming like the water from the fountains and everything is a church, and there are postcards for sale in the churches, and portable chargers for sale on the bridges and seagulls on the angels, they are launching off the angels.
But 6000 miles away, coffee will often come in larger cups (drip drip drip), consumed
haphazardly and with inattention at traffic lights and at office desks and behind the newsprint. In February, you should stop (sip sip sip); you might find yourself considering your coffee, which has traveled an awful long way from Costa Rica. Pollard’s Coffee of the Month Club’s February offering, Santa Elena, may taste familiar to seasoned customers, however this month the beans come naturally processed in contrast to the pulped natural honey process of our typical Costa Rica origin. The result is a fruitier, even more vibrant finish.
Owned by our friend Luzma Trujillo, the mountainous coffee farm that produces the Santa Elena beans rests south of San Jose. Wet and lush and cradled by the Talamanca Sierra, the beans are harvested through the late fall and winter, providing elegant tastes of apricot, jasmine, and milk chocolate.
Subscribe to our Coffee of the Month Club now to receive a bag of Costa Rica Santa Elena—for a year, six months, three months, just one, or even until cancelled. We can’t include a tiny chocolate with your order, but you won’t regret it with your afternoon espresso.
Grower: Luz Marina Trujillo
Variety: 90% Caturra; 10% Typica
District: Rosario, Tarrazú
Process: Natural
Altitude: 1250-1650 masl
Volcanic: Volcanic
Harvest: November - February
Tasting Notes: Apricot, Jasmine, Milk Chocolate