Country: Costa Rica
Region: Central Valley
Varietal: Catuai
Process: "Geo Natural"
Altitude: 1,700 - 1,800 MASL
Cupping Notes: Strawberry, Rose, Vanilla
Recommended Roast: City to Full City
Good For:Auto Drip, Pour Over, Espresso

Description:  The Alvarado Fonseca family started Corazón de Jesús in 2015 with a narrow goal: produce genuinely exceptional coffee out of the Chirripó micro-region. Ten years in, their small mill has the record to back it up — third place at Cup of Excellence in 2022, second in 2024, and in 2025 first place across all three processing categories, honeys, naturals, and washed. Sweeping all three is not a fluke, and it's put them squarely among the benchmark microlot producers in Costa Rica.

Finca El Salitre sits at 1,700–1,800 meters on the slopes below Costa Rica's highest peak. Nights get sharply cold up there, which slows cherry development to a crawl and lets the plant pack in sugars and organic acids — the reason Chirripó lots tend to come across so structurally distinct. Pérez Zeledón as a whole has been growing coffee since the late 19th century, with roughly 12,000 hectares spread across 4,200 smallholder farms.

Geo Natural is the family's own process, developed over months of trial. Hand-picked cherry goes into a 48-hour anaerobic fermentation in hermetic bags at 18–20°C, then 4 to 7 days of gradual dehydration on raised African beds. The distinguishing step comes next: the partially dried cherries get resealed in bags and held for 10 to 15 days at 15–17°C, a cool aging phase that pushes a wine-like maturation and knits the flavors together. Drying finishes on patios over about 15 days, and the lot then rests 4 to 5 months before dry-milling.

Catuaí is a cross of Mundo Novo and Yellow Caturra, and above 1,600 meters in mineral rich soil it produces about as clean and dense a cup as a coffee is capable of.