What is the Flavor Profile of Costa Rica Tarrazú DOTA | Tres Milagros Estate Geisha SHB Honey Process?

What are the Flavor Notes of Costa Rica Tarrazu Dota | Tres Milagros Estate Geisha SHB Honey Process?

Within the specialty coffee circle, whenever Hacienda Santuario owner Camilo comes up, most people agree that his extraordinary passion for coffee cultivation and his innovative experimental spirit have made him a collaborative partner for many of the world's top baristas over the years. In 2013, the Facusse family, who had long operated food sales in Costa Rica through their company Dinant, decided to leverage Camilo's successful experience with Colombian estates to launch a completely new estate project in Costa Rica, naming it Tres Milagros Estate. The name "Tres Milagros" (Three Miracles) comes from Camilo's belief that every successful estate needs three factors working in harmony: coffee trees, farmers, and land.

When deciding to launch the Costa Rica estate project, location was the most crucial determining factor. After lengthy discussions and land assessments, they finally chose to establish the estate in Costa Rica's highest-altitude region, Tarrazu. The estate's area sits at an altitude of 1,450-1,750 meters, with volcanic ash soil from the Irazu Volcano providing abundant nutrients for the coffee trees. Camilo also required the estate to maintain low-density coffee tree cultivation, which better supports nutrient absorption and growth and also enhances cupping quality. Today Tres Milagros Estate has a cultivation area of about 120 hectares, with annual top-tier micro-batch production of only about 300 bags. The estate's facilities were planned around four key principles:

First, a Green House System to provide better humidity, temperature, and ventilation for green coffee beans during the sun-drying stage.

Second, an Intercrop System for environmental coexistence, cultivating different plants to give the estate ecological diversity while also helping farmers control the farm's ecosystem.

Third, a Shade Grown System, in which most of the estate uses Inga tree species along with some other local trees, ensuring the coffee trees grow in a complete shade environment throughout their development and protecting their growth.

Fourth, selecting the right coffee varieties. From the start of cultivation, Camilo decided to use traditional low-yield but better-flavoured varieties. The excellent options include Bourbon and Geisha, as well as F1, a new variety researched and developed in Costa Rica in recent years by the French research organisation CIRAD. F1 is a hybrid of Villa Sarchi + Sachimor with Sudan Rume, so it carries the traditional Central American Villa Sarchi flavor characteristics along with the citrusy notes of the African Sudan Rume variety.

Coffee Information

Region: Dota, Tarrazu

Altitude: 1450-1750 meters

Processing Method: Honey Process

Grade: SHB

Variety: Geisha

Flavor Description: Kumquat, pear, plum, brown sugar, milk tea, with a round and viscous mouthfeel and a delicate, long-lasting sweetness

Recommended Brewing Method:

Dripper: Hario V60

Water Temperature: 90°C

Grind Size: Fuji Royal grinder setting 3.5

Brewing Method: Water-to-coffee ratio 1:15, using 15g of coffee. First pour 25g of water and let it bloom for 25 seconds. Second pour up to 120g and stop pouring. Wait until the water level in the coffee bed drops to half, then continue pouring slowly until reaching 225g total. Extraction time approximately 2:00.

Analysis: The three-stage pour clearly defines the front, middle, and back-end flavours of the coffee. Because the V60 has many ribs and drains quickly, pausing the pour during brewing helps extend the extraction time.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Costa Rica's Geisha can be delicate and tea-like, which makes it a good excuse to explore FrontStreet Coffee's Geisha selection. Geisha is named after the English transliteration "Geisha," and it is one of the most popular Arabica varieties, prized for its distinctive florals and excellent sweet-sour balance — and priced accordingly because of low yields, weak disease resistance, and demanding management. FrontStreet's entry-level pick is the Panama Boquete Geisha, which lets you taste the classic Panamanian orange-blossom honey note, an oolong-tea body, and delicate fruit acidity with clear layers, all at a friendly price.

From the estate that made the variety famous, FrontStreet Coffee carries the Esmeralda Red Label and Green Label Geisha. The Red Label, officially "Esmeralda Special," is grown at 1,600-1,800 meters, cupped above 90 points for every lot, and drawn from a single plot — FrontStreet's comes from Jaramillo — so buyers can pick a lot by its finer flavour nuances. The Green Label, or "Private Collection," blends several plots to express the estate's signature high-altitude Geisha profile, and its lower price makes the value excellent. For a single-variety estate expression from Ethiopia, FrontStreet's Genlana Geisha comes from a processing station founded in 2014 near the border of Kochore and Genlana Abaya, where roughly 700 hectares of fertile, shade-covered land surround it. Hand-picked ripe cherries are dried on raised beds for 14-20 days depending on the weather, then roasted medium-light for bright citrus acidity, an elegant ginger-flower aroma, ripe-fruit sweetness, and a silky body with Geisha's signature refined finish.

Geisha is a medium-light, hard-textured bean that tends to sink and clog the dripper, so FrontStreet Coffee grinds to about 78% passing a Chinese-standard #20 sieve — roughly fine sugar — and brews with water at 91°C. For pour-over, FrontStreet uses 15g in a small Hario V60 at a 1:16 ratio and a three-stage method: bloom 30g of water for 30 seconds, pour the second stage slowly in circles to 125g, wait for the bed to drop halfway, then pour to 225g, for a total extraction of about 2 minutes 10 seconds to 2 minutes 20 seconds.