Some of you may remember that we featured coffees from Dylan and his brothers last year. We were so impressed by the transparency, care, attention and endless detail that he was willing to share with us that this year, we decided to offer Dylan a contract to provide us a lot more coffee this year, booking back in February, while our Yellow Honey Milenio was still on the offer list - to get ahead of the current harvest and book some exceptional coffees.

This year, we have worked directly with Dylan to purchase from his farm Finca Matilde, in addition to farms operated by his brothers at Finca Toño, Finca Licho and El Roble. Finca Toño was acquired by the Aguilera family over a decade ago.

They planted cypress trees to create natural fences and windbreaks, facilitating the establishment of the first coffee lots. It took approximately five to six years to develop these initial lots, which ultimately became among the best farms for the Aguilera family, propelling them into the Cup of Excellence with their Geisha, San Roque, and VIC-04 Varietals.

VIC-04 is an exceptionally rare cultivar, fairly new, and one that I had never even heard of until we received the samples from Dylan and the Aguilera team. From what we initially understand, VIC-04 is only found in Costa Rica and was developed by ICAFE in Costa Rica. Describing it correctly, would be to use the term 'hybrid-cultivar', delineating from cross-breeding of various Centroamericano and H1 hybrids. Although not much is known about the variety itself, it's become recently acclaimed for yielding a voluptuous body, forest fruit acidity and high sweetness. 

This lot is processed experimentally as part of a Yeast Inoculation, where the selected yeasts supplant wild microorganisms, in order to yield greater control over the fermentation. Dylan also won the 2023 Cup Tasters Championship in Costa Rica, as any UK Competitor will know, this is one of the hardest disciplines to master.