Allan Oviedo and Family – Don Joel Micromill, Costa Rica
We've been sourcing coffee from Allan Oviedo Rodríguez and his family since 2017, beginning with his Villa Sarchí lots for our In My Mug subscription. Over the years we've worked through a wide range of his coffees, but the ones that keep stopping us in our tracks are his meticulously processed tiny lots of Kenia (SL28) from Finca Carmela. We're not the only ones – that coffee won third place at the 2024 Costa Rican Cup of Excellence in the Traditional Semi-Washed, Honey & Natural Processes category, adding to a run of CoE results between 2017 and 2024 that speaks for itself.
The Don Joel Micromill
The micromill is named in honour of Allan's late father, Don Joel – and the name carries real weight. Like many Costa Rican producers in the early 2000s, Allan was selling cherry to local mills at low market prices, with little control over how his coffee was processed or what it was worth. Building his own micromill was the dream, and when he finally achieved it, there was only one name it could carry.
Allan has now been running Don Joel for well over a decade, managing operations alongside his son Ignacio. Among ten siblings, Allan is one of five involved in coffee, and one of his brothers owns a neighbouring farm that also supplies cherry to the mill. The micromill sits just below Volcán Poás, bordering the Grecia Forest Reserve, surrounded by steep, rocky terrain and lush coffee trees. Getting there requires a truck – the roads are rough – but the views are something else. His success at auction and competition has enabled Allan to reinvest in the farms, buying back the remainder of his father's land and expanding plantings of Villa Sarchí, Typica, and SL28.
Finca La Cumbre
The original family farm, inherited by Allan after Don Joel's passing, Finca La Cumbre sits near San Luis de Grecia at around 1,600 metres above sea level. In the early days, Allan was working night shifts as a taxi driver in San José to keep the farm afloat, returning each morning to manage the land. It's that kind of grit that underpins everything he's built since. La Cumbre grows Caturra, Catuai, Villa Sarchí, and smaller experimental lots of Maragogype.
Finca Carmela
Just a five-minute drive from La Cumbre, Finca Carmela is a three-hectare plot planted with Villa Sarchí, Typica, and Kenia (SL28). Despite their proximity, the two farms experience noticeably different microclimates – rainfall, wind exposure, and sunlight vary enough between the two to influence flowering times, plant health, and ultimately, what ends up in the cup. Finca Carmela's position on the border between the Central and Western Valleys gives it conditions particularly well suited to specialty coffee, and it's here that Allan has coaxed results from the Kenia variety that have drawn attention from roasters and buyers around the world.
The Varieties
Two varieties define Don Joel's character above all others.
Villa Sarchí has a particularly local story. A natural dwarf mutation of Bourbon, it was discovered in the 1950s or 1960s in the town of Sarchí – the same province as Grecia, roughly ten miles from where Allan farms today. It's barely grown outside Costa Rica and is particularly well adapted to the high altitudes and strong winds of the Western Valley. Compact in stature, it produces an elegant, fruit-forward cup with bright acidity and a clarity that suits honey and washed processing beautifully. It's the variety that first drew us to Allan back in 2017, and it remains one of the best expressions of what this region can do.
Kenia – locally known as San Roque, and written in the Spanish spelling as "Kenia" – is believed to be one of the famous SL varieties from Kenya, most likely SL28 or SL34. SL28 was selected in the 1930s at Scott Agricultural Laboratories in Kenya from a single tree with drought-resistant traits, and recent genetic testing has confirmed its relationship to the Bourbon group. It produces large beans with exceptional cup potential: juicy, intensely aromatic, with the bright phosphoric acidity and dark berry character for which Kenyan coffees are celebrated. It's not an easy variety to grow or process – it's susceptible to the major coffee diseases and demands specific altitude and climate to shine. But at 1,600 metres in the Western Valley, processed by someone as meticulous as Allan, it produces something extraordinary. That 2024 Cup of Excellence result says it all.
Resilience and Innovation
Allan has been producing coffee in this region for over eighteen years, having grown up learning traditional methods from his father and brothers. After inheriting part of the family land, he introduced meticulous recordkeeping, new varietals, and refined farming and processing techniques – the kind of incremental, well-documented improvements that compound over time into a genuinely distinctive operation.
In 2017, Volcán Poás – just seven kilometres from La Cumbre – began its most intense period of eruptions in decades, and ash fall affected the plants. El Niño conditions around the same period intensified the dry season, reducing rainfall and impacting yields, particularly at Finca Carmela. Despite all of it, Allan's commitment to quality never wavered, and the coffees kept improving. His recent visit to the World of Coffee event in Copenhagen reflects both his growing international profile and the strength of the relationships he's built with roasters and importers worldwide.
Producer Overview
- Country: Costa Rica
- Region: Western Valley
- Province: Alajuela
- Canton: Grecia
- District: San Luis de Grecia
- Producer: Allan Oviedo Rodríguez
- Micromill: Don Joel – named after Allan's father; managed by Allan and his son Ignacio
Farms
- Finca La Cumbre – Elevation: ~1,600 m.a.s.l. Varietals: Caturra, Catuai, Villa Sarchí, Maragogype
- Finca Carmela – Elevation: ~1,600 m.a.s.l. Size: 3 hectares. Varietals: Villa Sarchí, Typica, Kenia (SL28)
