La Lia Red Honey

La Lia is a farm and micro mill in the heart of Tarrazu owned by the brothers Luis and Oscar Monge. The farm has been in the family for almost 70 years but it was in 2008 that the brothers took over the production and started their own micro mill named after their mother Lia.

The farm is divided in 7 plots of land with the highest parts reaching up to 2100 meters above sea level where the coffee cherries ripen very slowly resulting in high sugar concentration. They grow mainly Red Catuai on the highest altitudes and Caturra slightly lower. They also have extended their range of varieties to Bourbon, Pacamara, Tipica, Yellow Tipica, SL28, Kenia and Geisha to name a few. The annual production of the 60 hectare farm land is around 1000 bags of green coffee. All coffees are separated by farm, cultivar and picking date. The same families that have returned to work at the farm for 14 years are handpicking the coffee. The 60 pickers have been trained to only pick the perfectly ripe cherries and also to sort the cherries after the picking. This is hard work but very important to be able to produce delicious coffee.