Las Lajas Alma

Las Lajas is one of Costa Rica’s most respected family-run coffee projects, led by the Chacón family in Sabanilla de Alajuela, Central Valley. After inheriting family land, the Chacón siblings chose to rethink their approach to coffee, placing environmental care, stable employment and family tradition at the centre of their work. In the early 2000s, Oscar Chacón and Francisca Cubillo created the Las Lajas Ecological Benefit, allowing them to process their own coffee with greater control and creativity. Their honey and natural processes helped define a more adventurous side of Costa Rican specialty coffee. For this lot, the Chacón family selected Typica Lima as part of their programme to diversify beyond conventional Caturra and Catuaí. Its aromatic character and refined fruit expression provide an elegant foundation for the intensity created by the Yellow Diamond process: 84 hours of anaerobic fermentation in a sealed tank with all mucilage retained, followed by 15–20 days of drying on raised beds. The result is an expressive, layered cup with concentrated red-berry sweetness, pear freshness, rose-petal aromatics and a grenadine finish. Asteri note: A fermentation-led Costa Rican anaerobic honey from the Chacón family, selected for its intense fruit, floral lift and structured sweetness.