High in the hills, Monte Copey coffee farm strives to grow Costa Rica’s best

The magical coffee-growing region, with its waves of green hills that resemble Tuscany, has received a lot of attention thanks to the micro mill’s many accolades. The Navarro’s have also worked in close collaboration with Japanese barista Hidenori Izaki, who won the 2014 World Barista Championship using Monte Copey coffee. But for the family, these recognitions belong equally to the Dota region and to Costa Rica.

There are so many sayings about good things — whether they come to those who wait or that they’re worth fighting for — that the cliches can sometimes collide in contradiction with one another.

But high above on this perch, where one of Costa Rica’s very best cups of coffee is made, both fighting and waiting make equal sense.

Enrique Navarro Sr., the 55-year-0ld owner of Microbeneficio Monte Copey, often alludes to the business behind the 2014 Cuop of Excellence award winner as a never-ending battle.

“It always opens up the desire to keep fighting and going forward,” he says in a quiet but assured tone as he leans back on the railings of a staircase. “It’s not just that we won and ‘OK’. We’re going to keep fighting forever.”

Though the business world is driven by competition, it’s a disciplined patience that has come to define Monte Copey coffee’s supreme quality. Plants here thrive under a longer-than-normal maturing process, which is capped off by a strict harvesting period from January to March of each year.