Farm info

Roble Negro coffee is processed at Jorge Vasquéz Ureña’s Roble Negro micromill. The mill and his coffee farm, Finca Cedral Alto, are located in the town of Aserrí in Costa Rica’s Tarrazú region about 45 minutes outside of the capital of San José.

The name Roble Negro means “black oak” and Cedral Alto means “high cedar grove”. These names indicate the importance of trees, forestation, and environmental preservation to Jorge and his coffee production. Cedral Alto is 22.5 hectares, with 12 hectares of primary forest, 6.5 hectares of reforestation and pasture land, and 3 hectares of coffee cultivation. The farm is filled with natural springs and freshwater sources, which the forested areas protect and keep clean, and is situated at the transition between the Pacific side of the country and the Central Valley region, spanning 1750–2000 meters above sea level.

Jorge’s Story

Jorge grew up playing soccer with his cousins on the farms around Aserrí where their parents worked picking coffee. He graduated from college with a degree in accounting and worked for Costa Rica’s Banco Nacional for 21 years, serving as a branch manager for the last 11 years of his time there. Jorge now owns a recycling company, Compañía de Reciclaje Ecológico, which he founded in response to the country’s pollution levels. The recycling company is an extension of his belief in taking care of the natural world around him. Compañía de Reciclaje Ecológico has 14 employees, creates another 20 indirect jobs, and annually processes 2,000 tonnes of materials like cardboard, paper, wood, plastics, metals, and more.

Jorge bought Finca El Cedral in 2007 from Don Fernando Monge, who had inherited it from his father Don Adan Monge. The Monge family owned the farm for 50 years, and before that the property belonged to the Rojas family, a major coffee producing entity in the area during the twentieth century. One of Jorge’s first concerns on Finca El Cedral Alto was to protect the six water sources on the property. The waterways form the beginning of the Rio Jorco River and serve as drinking water aquifers for the nearby towns of Cedral Abajo, Vuelta de Jorco, and Acosta, as well as acting as irrigation sources for surrounding farms. The farm is dotted with stunning waterfalls thanks to these water sources—a reminder of the importance and power of freshwater to people, flora, fauna, and agriculture.

Rainforest Flora and Fauna

The primary and secondary forests are filled with many varieties of native plants like orchids, bromeliads, and epiphytes, as well as many different trees including oak, cedar, fig, avocado, guava, and poro. The forests also include 600 cypress trees planted as windbreaks to protect the oak and cedar trees that were recently planted for reforestation. All of this plant life makes for a good habitat for plenty of fauna as well, including oncilla tiger cats, spotted pacas, armadillos, coyotes, white nosed coatis, falcons, parrots, snakes, and a variety of other birds, reptiles, and mammals.

Cedral Alto also contains fruit trees planted between the coffee plants, including orange, peach, sweet lemon, plantain, soursop, and avocado, which provide for both people and other animals. The farm cultivates Red and Yellow Catuai, and has a nursery of “Criollo” seedlings collected from trees that survived from over 50 years ago when that was the primary cultivated variety. New seedlings are planted at the beginning of the rainy season, usually in May and June, and require extensive care through the first year of their transition as their root systems form and they develop foliage for the transition from the nursery to the open field. Climate change has made this process though, by splitting the rainy season and increasing the number of dry months while reducing total rainfall. This changes both the development of the plants, as well as the way that they producers can work with them.

Farm Maintenance

Cedral Alto is home to 10 head of cattle that produce milk and meat, acting as an alternative income source as well as a food source for the farm itself. Jorge employs two full-time workers and houses them in the refinished house on the property. In-line with Jorge’s commitment to sustainability, Roble Negro removes all weeds by hand, doesn’t use herbicides, and avoids agrichemicals.  Instead, they use microorganisms harvested from the humus layer of the forest floor to create non-toxic applications to control insects and natural diseases like leaf rust, as well as to facilitate nutrient absorption. Pruning and preventative herbicide/insecticide applications are also done by hand and use the “melasa” byproduct of a sugarcane mill as a natural application medium. 

Roble Negro first processed their own coffee at their on-site wet mill during the 2020 harvest, and the processing follows the rest of their commitment to protecting their environment. The farm uses Honey, Natural, and careful Washed processing to avoid water contamination. Coffee cherry skins are reincorporated back into the soil as part of their natural fertilization, and the coffee is sun-dried both for quality as well as to make use of the natural energy source.

Roble Negro Micromill
The Roble Negro micromill is located at Finca Cedral Alto in Tarbaca, Aserrí, Costa Rica. The micromill partners with local coffee growers to produce quality, traceable lots and to help facilitate access to international markets. The mill was founded in November 2019, initially only fitted with drying beds and patios. The team made several important investments in the mill in 2020, growing the infrastructure to be able to process Natural, Honey, and Washed coffees. Currently the mill’s infrastructure includes:

• Gravity station
• Floatation tanks
• Pulper
• Fermentation tanks
• Drying beds and patios
• Sorter
• Peeler
• Density table
• Storage warehous

Jorge’s Roble Negro micromill is well-known for its high quality standards and thoughtful sustainability practices. Operations at the mill aim to reduce the use of nonrenewable resources like water and electricity, repurpose waste products into natural fertilizers, and even ensure that the GrainPro used for packing and shipping coffee is reused or recycled by the mill’s global partners.

This lot of Catuai coffee underwent Natural processing at Roble Negro. Harvested cherries are dried for 20–30 days to reach 11% humidity. While being dried, the cherries are turned every three hours to ensure even drying. Dried cherries are rested in the mill’s warehouse for at least two months prior to being milled and prepared for export.