Until the late 1990s, most coffee in Costa Rica followed the same path: cherries from many different farms went to large cooperative or private mills, where they were processed and blended together. It was efficient, but it meant an exceptional lot from one farm could disappear into a blend with everyone else’s.
Small Mills, Traceable Lots
Starting around the turn of the millennium, and accelerating from about 2008 as smaller producers began financing their own small-scale wet-milling equipment, Costa Rica saw a shift toward micromills — farm-scale operations that process coffee independently instead of sending it into a shared mill. That made it possible to keep a single farm’s lot separate and traceable from cherry to export, and to experiment with processing method by lot instead of applying one method to everything a mill received.
What It Changed for Buyers
This is part of why Costa Rica became known for processing innovation, particularly honey processing — producers had the control to try it at small scale and see what it did to a specific lot, rather than deciding for an entire cooperative’s harvest at once. It is also why, today, a specialty lot from Costa Rica is as likely to be known by the name of the mill or farm that processed it as by the region alone.
It is the same reason lot-level traceability matters when you are choosing a green coffee supplier — knowing the farm, not just the region, is what tells you what you are actually buying. See our varieties or wholesale page for our own lots.