GROWN BY US
Horsham Coffee Roaster – La Pastora
Overview
Location:
Altitude:
Varietal:
Our story:
In early 2026 we bought a one-hectare coffee farm high in the mountains of San Lorenzo, in Tarrazú, Costa Rica. It's called La Pastora, and it's the first land we've owned – the result of six years working with producer Carlos Montero and his daughter Marianella, who we've been visiting almost every year since 2020.
The farm is two parcels of Geisha joined by a strip of protected high-altitude rainforest, which accounts for about a third of the hectare and stays exactly as it is. Alongside the Geisha there's a small planting of Costa Rica 95, and around 1,000 H10 Millenio trees going into the gaps left by the oldest trees as we replace them. The long-term aim is to produce separate Geisha and H10 microlots from the farm.
Six years before we bought anything
We first went to Costa Rica in 2020 and met Carlos Montero and his daughter Marianella in Tarrazú. Their business, Selva, exports coffee for a wide network of small family farms across the country, and working with them gave us a way into the Costa Rican coffee community that would have taken us years to build alone. We've been back almost every year since.
A few years in, we started talking about the idea of having a small piece of land of our own – somewhere we could follow a single site closely, season after season, and learn properly how different varietals behave. Around the same time, Carlos mentioned he was open to selling some land to raise capital for upgrading his wet mill and dry mill.
That's what set it in motion, though it wasn't quick. It took several more visits, a proper assessment of the land and a good deal of paperwork before we agreed terms in 2025, and the purchase completed in early 2026.
It's worth being clear about what that means. The sale funded Carlos's investment in his own milling operation and Selva carry on exactly as before – we still buy from their network and we intend to keep doing so. This is one hectare, not a change of direction.
One hectare in Tarrazú
The farm sits high in the mountains of San Lorenzo, in Tarrazú. It's made up of two parcels joined by a strip of protected high-altitude rainforest – about a third of the hectare in total, full of birds, butterflies and wildlife. That third stays exactly as it is.
The smaller parcel is planted entirely with Geisha. The trees are only a few years old, but the cherry coming off them already looks like it has real potential.
The larger parcel is mostly Geisha as well, though those trees are 15 to 20 years old, with a small planting of Costa Rica 95 alongside. Many have been pruned hard and some are due for replacement, which leaves gaps – around 1,000 of them, which we'll be filling with H10 Millenio.
What we're aiming for
The plan is to produce separate Geisha and H10 microlots from the farm as the new planting matures. That's a slow business – newly planted coffee takes a few years before it produces anything worth separating – so this is a project measured in harvests rather than months.
2026 was a modest start. A combination of the natural crop cycle and the age of the older trees meant only a very small amount of Geisha came off the farm this year. We'd rather tell you that than dress it up: this first harvest is genuinely tiny, and the interesting part is what happens over the next few years.
We'll keep this page updated as the planting goes in and the trees come along.
On The Farm: La Pastora
