GREEN Wild Toucan Geisha, Costa Rica
Sea Island Coffee is proud to offer the world’s first ‘Toucan Coffee’. Exclusively supplied to us by the magnificent Coffea Diversa estate in Costa Rica, where wild, fiery-billed aracari toucan birds (known locally as ‘cusingo’) inhabit the tropical forest and feast on only the very ripest coffee cherries. Interestingly, at the Coffea Diversa estate, where hundreds of rare coffee varietals are grown, the toucans are especially fond of the cherries produced by the Geisha and Bourbon Pointu plants.
An innovative way of producing coffee from the esteemed Coffea Diversa estate, working in harmony with the nature and animals living around the farm. The Aracari Toucan is native to the southern region of Costa Rica and live freely around Coffea Diversa’s coffee garden.Â
During the harvesting season they feed on fully ripe coffee cherries, skilfully removing the cherry skin (red pulp) with their bills, and then swallowing only the coffee bean, covered with sweet, sticky mucilage. The coffee beans go through the toucan’s digestive system, and are then deposited in neat silver piles, after which they are collected by the farm workers, cleaned, dried, processed, and allowed to rest for several weeks to ensure uniform moisture content.
Both the Geisha and the Bourbon Pointu maintain their cupping attributes, but the body of the ‘Toucan Processed Coffee’ is heavier than in the conventional washed Processed for these varieties. The taste attributes are similar but more intense, i.e., the floral of the Geisha is more pronounced and so is the caramelly taste in the Bourbon Pointu.
The Coffea Diversa estate is home to the largest private coffee varietal collection in the world, with about 200 botanical coffee varieties & cultivars. Gonzalo Hernandez, the owner of Coffea Diversa and one of the world’s leading specialists on coffee varietals, describes the estate not as a coffee farm, but a ‘coffee garden’ where rare and hard to grow varietals thrive.Â
Located in one of the most remote areas of Costa Rica in the Biolley District, coffee beans in the Coffea Diversa garden grow in the confluence of both the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean climates, a rare phenomenon that has a superb effect on the taste profile of its coffees.
