Costa Rica - Corazón de Jesús "Vista Paraíso" Java [25/26]

We're massive fans of the work of Jonny Alvarado and his mill - Corazón de Jesús (which we've taken to abbreviating to CDJ - bit limited for characters on the labels). We're not alone in that - they've had many, many podium finishes in the Costa Rica Cup of Excellence, including 1st place washed and 3rd place honey/natural category in the 2025 competition.
We featured coffee from the "Los Toños" plot for the last two years, this year's hails from "Vista Paraíso" with a slightly more intense processing style. Very sweet and process driven, this one is for lovers of funk.

Brew Guide:

Best Brewed with: Filter/Turbo Espresso

Lightest Roaster Influence: An intensely processed natural, big pointy beans - it's a recipe for tipping and harsh dark choc/cacao nib/cheesy ferment character if handled poorly. We've softened the overall heat application and stretched the roast out a bit, but with even momentum throughout - and a low end temperature. There's only so much funk-min you can do for a coffee like this, but we think we've shown its best side.

Best Rested: 4+ weeks

Filter: 65g/L, 92°C when fresh; 90°C when rested

Espresso: 18g/50g/18-22s

We're tasting: Very process-forward - the redfruit, bubblegum and candyfloss of beaujolais nouveau wine. In the cup it's ultra-sweet, we find white chocolate, rhubarb and vanilla custard, tutti frutti sweets and a bright acidity like summer fruits squash poured a little too strong. There's a fruity boozy note to the finish like sloe gin, and the cup cools to a distinct pink marshmallow note.

Traceability

The Story

Corazón de Jesús

Costa Rica's micromill revolution began in the early 2000s, allowing small producers to process their own coffee rather than selling to large cooperatives or centralized mills. This shift enabled farmers to control processing methods, maintain lot separation, and capture more value from quality-focused production. Corazón de Jesús is emblematic of this movement, with the family gaining independence to experiment with fermentation and processing techniques, and capture more value for their coffee. This micromill revolution really set Costa Rica apart - for many years, the most cutting edge naturals and honey process coffees were coming out of CR, in a way that many origins are now only beginning to catch up to.

Jhon Alvarado Abarca and the Alvarado Fonseca family are first-generation coffee producers who established the Corazón de Jesús wet mill in November 2015. The family transitioned from growing vegetables to coffee in 2009, with their first notable harvest in 2012. They built their processing facility with virtually no budget, using borrowed equipment and hand-constructed drying beds for their initial harvest.

The family has achieved consistent success in Costa Rica's Cup of Excellence competitions since their first entry in 2021. Their trajectory includes fifth place in 2021, third place in 2022, second place in 2024, and an unprecedented sweep in 2025 with first place finishes in both washed and natural categories. The family currently manages five farms in the Brunca region: El Salitre, Los Toños, La Torre, Vista Paraiso, and La Cusuka. Corazón de Jesús processes coffee from all five family farms using a plethora of methods including the more traditional - washed, honey, natural, up to the higher intervention techniques - anoxic ("anaerobic"), and natural reposado/extended fermentation. The facility includes African raised beds with weather protection, climate-controlled fermentation spaces, hermetic tanks, and extensive drying patios. The family has gained a reputation for experimental processing and developing very precise fermentation protocols across their lots, both for individual varieties as well as the individual plots on the farms.

Java

Java carries one of coffee's more circuitous origin stories and its name has caused considerable confusion for decades. In 1928, Dutch agricultural researcher P.J.S. Cramer travelled to Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia) and selected seeds directly from estates there, bringing eleven selections back to Indonesia where seven were released for cultivation. One of these, designated AB3, was planted in East Java before spreading to Sumatra, where it became known locally as Abyssinia and valued for its distinctive longberry bean form and partial resistance to coffee leaf rust.

In the mid-20th century, AB3 travelled from Java to Cameroon via the Vilmorin company, where breeder Pierre Bouharmont spent nearly twenty years selecting for coffee berry disease tolerance and adaptability to smallholder production with low inputs before releasing it commercially in the 1980s under the name "Java" in reference to its Indonesian provenance. In 1991, CIRAD introduced the variety to Costa Rica with the intention of providing Central American farmers with a disease-resistant option, but it performed poorly at low elevations and was largely abandoned.

For twenty-five years Java remained overlooked in Central America until Panamanian farmers discovered its potential when planted at high altitude in volcanic soils, leading Panama to become the first country to officially recognise it in 2016. What had long been assumed to be a Typica selection based on its morphological similarities (slender cherries, upright "Christmas tree" growth habit, elongated beans) was revealed through World Coffee Research's genetic fingerprinting to be a direct Ethiopian landrace with no Typica lineage at all, placing it in the same category as Gesha as an "escapee" variety that bypassed the colonial Yemen-to-Java route entirely.

The variety requires high altitude to express its quality potential, performing best above 1600 metres where its disease resistance to both coffee leaf rust provides genuine agronomic advantage. For smallholders, Java offers a more manageable alternative to Gesha: it maintains better productivity at elevation, demonstrates greater resilience to environmental stress, and requires fewer inputs whilst still commanding premium pricing when properly cultivated, making it an economically viable option for quality-focused producers working with limited resources and infrastructure.

We featured two coffees from Corazón de Jesús in 2024: a natural Milenio lot in Colourful V5 and Java from Los Toños. We followed that with the Toños Java & a Typica from El Salitre in 2025, and now we're featuring Vista Paraiso for the first time