Monte Copey, El Alto, Costa Rica

Brothers Enrique and Josue Navarro Porras took over the family farm in 2009, determined to take quality to a whole new level. They purchased a Penagos mechanical hulling machine, built 22 drying tables—so the coffee wouldn’t dry on the ground and they could slow down and control the entire process—and implemented strict separation of the harvest by plot, variety, and harvest date. Thirty workers hand-pick only perfectly ripe cherries, and four people operate their own mini-mill.

Every Monday during the harvest, Enrique makes a two-and-a-half-hour trip to a lab in San José to personally taste all the current lots so he can adjust the processing on the fly. That kind of precision simply shows in the cup. The Koppi roastery in Helsingborg, Sweden, has been collaborating with the Monte Copey farm since 2010—at that time, the farm produced 80 bags of green coffee; today, it produces 250 to 300, without a single compromise in quality.