This is In My Mug coffee number 933, roasted and posted to subscribers on Friday 25th September 2026.

A gentle peach sweetness on the first sip slips seamlessly into marzipan. Sultanas and a dash of cream on the aftertaste round it out, but it's that sweet marzipan you'll keep coming back for.

In 2015, a jury of international judges sat down in Costa Rica to cup their way through that year's Cup of Excellence. One of them was Roland Glew, then Head Roaster at Hasbean and now our Green Buyer. Cup of Excellence is judged blind, so nobody in the room knows whose coffee is whose until the scores are locked in and the names are read out.

Tenth place, 88.44 points, went to a lot from Finca Ortiz 1900 in Santa María de Dota. The name on the entry was Johana Calderón Martínez. That was the first Roland had heard of Granitos de Altura del Ortiz, and he has had them on his list ever since.

The one that got away, for a while

Wanting a coffee and being able to buy it are two very different things. We came away from that week knowing exactly how good Granitos was, and then spent several years unable to get hold of any of it.

It took until 2022, and our long-standing export partners at Exclusive Coffees, before the first bags finally landed with us. We've bought from the family every year since. Seven years of watching from a distance, four years of actually getting to roast it. Worth the wait, and we don't intend to let it slip again.

Read the full Granitos de Altura del Ortiz producer story →

High altitude little beans

Micro-Beneficio Granitos de Altura del Ortiz sits in Santa María de Dota, in the Tarrazú region of San José province. Tarrazú is made up of the Dota, San Marcos and León Cortés cantons, threaded through by the mountains of the Talamanca Sierra, and it is about as good as coffee growing country gets. Fertile volcanic soils, an average temperature just under 20°C, and steep slopes that give you both the altitude for slow cherry maturation and some shelter for the trees.

The family's farms are spread across that gradient, from around 1,700 metres up to 2,100. Between them they cover Nery, Bisunga, La Esperanza and the three Ortiz plots, named simply for their elevations: Ortiz 1800, Ortiz 1900 and Ortiz 2000. This particular lot comes from Ortiz 1800, grown at 1,800 metres in loamy, volcanic soil that gets a healthy 2,050mm of rain a year. The trees here are around a decade old, coming into the sweet spot of maturity, and the cherry was picked across this year's January to February harvest.

The name Granitos translates as "High Altitude Little Beans", which is a nod to the terrain and to the fastidious approach that defines the place. Small operation, very high standards.

The varietal here is Catuai, one of the most widely planted varieties in Costa Rica and one we've written about at length recently. Compact, resilient and well suited to these slopes, and a genuinely expressive coffee once you push it up past 1,800 metres. It's also far from the only thing growing across the family's farms, which also carry Caturra, Villa Sarchí, Typica Mejorado, Geisha, SL28 and Ethiopian landrace varieties.

Read our full guide to the Catuai varietal →

Johana and Joyce

The mill was originally their father's. Omar Calderón built it, ran it, and then his daughters asked whether they might take the reins. He said yes, of course he did. That was just over a decade ago, and Johana and Joyce have run it together since.

There was a spell recently when Johana stepped back to have a baby and Joyce took the lead on her own. The baby has arrived, Johana is back, and the two of them are once again running the mill side by side. Omar still plays a vital role, managing the farms where the coffee is grown.

What they are not doing is getting bigger. Rather than expanding production, the sisters focus on refining every step they can control, from cherry selection through to drying, so that each lot meets their standards. Less coffee, made better, is a harder business decision than it sounds.

Their philosophy is rooted in connection: with the land, with the coffee, and with the people who come to visit and share in the experience. "When the harvest is in full swing, the days are long and the workloads are heavy," Joyce says. "But we're energised by people visiting, sharing their time, and connecting over coffee."

Granitos is also part of a wider movement in Costa Rica, one that champions traceability, sustainability and women-led coffee businesses. It's a new generation of producers elevating Costa Rican coffee through innovation, care and connection, and we're proud to be a small part of it.

Two seeds

The sisters have started a side project they're calling Dos Semillas, or "Two Seeds". They buy cherry from other local farms and process it themselves at their own mill, alongside the main Granitos work, with the aim of building up enough funds to eventually buy a farm of their own.

Every farm in the Granitos operation to date has been Omar's. This would be the first piece of land Johana and Joyce own outright. Omar, entirely in character, has already donated Geisha seeds for them to plant there once they buy.

They've also been working with him to trial some new varietals on the existing farm. Not expanding the estate, just small plantings alongside the established stock: Milenio, Starameyer, Catigua and Paraíso. These are newer varietals with a growing reputation for cup quality, and Roland noticed Starameyer and Milenio cropping up on a few other farms in the area on his last visit. Several producers are trialling small amounts to see how they perform. Time will tell, but it's exactly the kind of curiosity we like to see.

A quiet harvest, put to good use

Roland's last visit to Granitos was in 2024. Costa Rica has had a couple of relatively low harvests, which meant that by the time he arrived in May the picking was already finished. A later trip than he'd normally make, and with less coffee to bring in, the team had wrapped up early.

What happens next is the bit worth paying attention to. At Granitos, as at a number of other farms we work with, those spare days go into improving the farm and the mill. That's a very positive sign. It tells you they earn enough in a normal year that a tough one doesn't force them to stop investing.

At the mill it has meant new drying tables and a colour sorter. The extra drying capacity gives Johana and Joyce genuine freedom to pick whichever processing method they think suits the coffee in front of them, rather than whichever one there happens to be space for. That's a quality decision dressed up as a logistics one. The colour sorter uses an electronic eye to spot damaged beans and separate them out before batches go on to Exclusive Coffees.

Yellow honey, and where it sits on the scale

Honey processing is the middle path between washed and natural. The skin comes off the cherry with a specially calibrated depulper, but the sticky, sugar-rich mucilage stays on the bean through drying on raised beds. What you get is sweeter and more textured than a washed coffee, and cleaner and more controlled than a natural.

The interesting part is that honey isn't one method, it's a dial. Mucilage is loaded with sugars, mostly fructose and glucose, along with pectin and various acids. As the coffee dries, two things happen at once. Those sugars migrate slowly into the bean, building body and sweetness. At the same time the yeasts and bacteria living on the mucilage ferment them into organic acids, esters and other flavour-active compounds. Leave more mucilage on and dry more slowly, and both effects intensify. Take more off and dry faster, and you land closer to a washed cup.

Producers label the results by colour, named for how dark the beans go as they dry, which is a direct function of how much mucilage is left on and how long it takes:

• White honey: roughly 10 to 20% mucilage retained, 6 to 8 days drying. Clean, crisp, light bodied.
• Yellow honey: roughly 25 to 50%, 8 to 10 days. Balanced, with a mild, rounded sweetness.
• Gold honey: roughly 50 to 75%, 10 to 12 days. Richer and more syrupy.
• Red honey: roughly 75 to 90%, 12 to 15 days. Fruity and winey, medium bodied.
• Black honey: 90 to 100%, 15 to 20 days or more. Intense, jammy, full bodied.

This lot is a yellow honey, so a meaningful layer of that fruit stays put, somewhere between a quarter and a half of it, dried over eight to ten days. It's a properly executed middle of the road choice rather than a light touch, and it's the reason the cup has that marzipan weight sitting under the peach rather than the sharper clarity you'd get from a white honey or a washed lot.

One thing worth knowing is that these categories aren't strictly standardised. What one producer calls a yellow honey, another might label gold. The colour names are a useful guide rather than a precise specification, which is exactly why the extra drying tables at Granitos matter so much. More space means the sisters can commit to a target and manage the drying properly, turning the beds often enough to keep things even without rushing the fermentation.

Read our guide to honey and pulped natural processing →

Traceability

• Country: Costa Rica
• Region: Tarrazú
• Province: San José
• Town: Santa María de Dota
• Mill: Micro-Beneficio Granitos de Altura del Ortiz
• Producer: Calderón Family
• Farm: Ortiz 1800
• Growing altitude: 1,800 m.a.s.l.
• Soil type: Loamy
• Average annual rainfall: 2,050mm
• Plant age: Around 10 years
• Harvest months: January to February
• Variety: Catuai
• Processing method: Yellow honey
• Export partner: Exclusive Coffees
• Relationship since: 2022

Cupping scores

Cupping notes: Peach, marzipan, sultana.

Cup of Excellence Cupping Scores

• Clean Cup: 6/8
• Sweetness: 6.5/8
• Acidity: 6/8
• Mouthfeel: 6/8
• Flavour: 6.5/8
• Aftertaste: 6.5/8
• Balance: 6.5/8
• Overall: 6.5/8
• Correction: +36
• Total: 86.5/100

If you'd like to find out more about how we score coffees, have a read of What Do Coffee Cupping Scores Actually Mean?, and if you fancy trying cupping yourself, we've got a guide to that too: What is Coffee Cupping.

Roasting information

Medium - keep this to the middle of the gap, slowing it a little to help develop the layered sweetness.