At rush hour, traffic lanes disappear. It looks like the roads may have been originally designed for three lanes of traffic and parking on either side, but not now. Now it’s more like some vicious game of Frogger where at any moment the gap you’re shooting for may collapse and squash you with it. Horns blare as Francisco Meña maneuvers his SUV through the throngs of pedestrians, handcarts, cars, and trucks filling the streets of San José, the capital of Costa Rica. The city sprawls through the very heart of the country, in the Central Valley, and it is by far the largest metropolitan area in Costa Rica.

We’re heading to the very center of the city, the century-old national post office which stands in stately stone elegance beneath the shadow of the super-modern high rise of the national bank. We’ve just visited the offices and exceptional cupping room of Deli Café, Francisco’s business, at the edge of the city, and as he weaves through traffic searching for a parking space, he gives a non-stop history lesson on Costa Rican coffee.

Between the 1810s and 1820s, coffee became a valuable agricultural crop first from seedlings brought from Cuba. The Central Valley was the first area planted with coffee, and in 1933, the Coffee Office was created. Costa Rica was the first coffee-producing country to develop laws regulating the industry, says Francisco. Law 2762 regulates the producers, the millers and the exporters. “Costa Rica has a perfect microclimate and terroir,” he says, “to bring out almost any flavor in coffee. The infrastructure, safety, terroir, and climate makes Costa Rica one of the world’s perfect places to grow coffee.”

Francisco smiles easily and readily relates whatever he can to spread education about the crop he and his family have devoted their entire lives to, and in his passion and commitment to coffee, he is an awful lot like most Costa Ricans, Ticos or Ticas in the vernacular, who often appear to enjoy nothing more than discussing and celebrating their local elixir with whomever wants to learn.

We’re on our way to meet another such person, one Anna Lorena Cerdas Jimenez, the 2006 Costa Rica Barista Champion, and we find her in the heart of the old post office. It’s the rainy season, and as we head into the building, the sun has disappeared and dark clouds cover the city. By the time we reach the door, umbrellas have bloomed all around us and the rain beats down with desperate urgency. We make the door in the knick of time, and as we enter the beautiful building, we are greeted by two simultaneous and dichotomous scenes. To our left are rows and rows of traditional, cool, gray metal postboxes, and to our right is a warm, stylish and very modern café whose seating flows right into the mailroom.

Continued... only in the pages of Barista Magazine!