Costa Rica Coffee Origin - Hacienda Sonora Venecia Variety - Coffee Beans Suitable for Pour Over

Costa Rica Hacienda Sonora Venecia Honey

Costa Rica Hacienda Sonora Venecia Variety Honey Process

Flavor: Orange, plum, lime, lemon peel, mulberry, honey, with a rich and smooth texture. FrontStreet Coffee recommends it as pour-over coffee.

Hacienda Sonora is a century-old estate, now run jointly by father and son Alberto Guardia and Diego Guardia.

It sits in Costa Rica's Western Valley, in fact very close to the Central Valley, with some farmland reaching into it, and the estate places unusual emphasis on environmental protection. Of its 100 hectares, 35 hectares remain preserved as pristine forest, while 20 hectares are given over to sugarcane.

More remarkable still, all the electricity used on the estate comes from its own hydroelectric equipment, and the surplus is supplied free of charge to the employees who work there. The whole estate functions like a small community, providing salaries, free accommodation, and medical services.

Hacienda Sonora is regarded as a pioneer in varieties and processing methods in Costa Rica, and the combinations it turns out each year are highly sought after by roasters in Europe and America.

The Venecia variety natural process featured here, for example, scored 95 points in Coffee Review in 2016. Even the honey process, which does not score easily, reached 94 points. Its natural line is known in the market for juicy, wine-like notes, rich ripe fruit, and floral aromas while staying clean, while the honey process brings a range of fruit flavours together with the characteristic sweetness and rich texture of the method.

All the cherries produced at Hacienda Sonora are processed at its own micro-mill. Strict ripe-fruit selection runs through harvest, each processing method is handled with close attention to detail, and rigorous hand sorting of defective beans comes last. That discipline is the main reason the cup can be so layered and yet so clear.

This batch features the rare single-variety Venecia. It is a rare variety developed in Costa Rica that may not yet appear in earlier documentation of variety lineage.

It was discovered by a coffee farmer named Isidro Rodriguez in the village of Venecia, San Carlos, Alajuela province, at the foot of Poas Volcano in northern Costa Rica. It takes its name from the discovery site, Venecia village, much as Villa Sarchi does.

Venecia is a special variety selected from a natural mutation of Caturra. Alongside the excellent flavour it inherits directly from the Caturra line, this selected mutation matures its fruit more slowly and tolerates heavy rainfall better, which is precisely why it was preserved.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Hacienda Sonora's honey processed Venecia shows how much a single variety can change a cup, and if you enjoy the clarity it brings, a pour-over setup is the best way to explore similar coffees. FrontStreet Coffee's pour-over-friendly range is led by the Hario V60, whose 60-degree cone and large single hole push the water toward the centre before it drips through, lengthening contact with the grounds and lifting aroma and flavour. The resin version is a particular favourite because it blocks heat loss, is moulded to very tight tolerances, and stays light in the hand through a long pour.

Among the beans that suit it, the Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Gudingding is washed and shows citrus, berry, and floral notes with a green-tea sweetness, gentle and easy to like. The Ethiopia Huakui leans tropical, with strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit, and lychee and almost no bitterness. The Strawberry Candy blends a Panama Geisha with a Costa Rican honey processed component for floral, grape, and dried blueberry notes, while the Mozart brings raisin honey sweetness and osmanthus. All are light to medium roasted and built for the clean, aromatic extraction a V60 delivers, which is exactly the style that makes an estate like Hacienda Sonora worth seeking out.