Telling Coffee Stories: The Kiddos

This series aims to feature our favorite coffees and producers, as well as tell some of our own coffee stories. 

We were able to chat with Kathia Zamora, the producer behind our latest release The Kiddos, when she was in town for the SCA show in April. 

Kathia is part of a group of producers working together in Costa Rica, and we've been fortunate enough to have a few different coffees from their group (one of them the very popular Cafe Con Amor!) We were actually able to talk with most of the producers behind The Farmers Project, an incredible experience. Meeting a coffee producer for the first time feels a bit like meeting someone famous. You've heard so much about the agriculture and processing, you've seen pictures and tasted the coffee, but to see them standing in front of you and sharing about their beautiful farms, it's overwhelming. "Coffee is about relationships" is a big part of their mission, and we have been honored to be one of their roasting partners, to learn from them and share their coffee with you. 

Kathia is a mother to two young boys, and her hope is that they will grow up to fall in love with coffee just as she did. Her farm, Cloza Estate, is a fourth-generation coffee farm that she manages with help from her parents. This recent release, The Kiddos, is named for both the beans themselves (teeeeny little peaberry beans, a natural mutation), as well as her own sons who began to learn about coffee while helping with this special microlot. The legacy of coffee holds a huge weight to Kathia, and she is proud to remember the past while looking to the future to ensure the tradition is carried on. 

One of the amazing things about Kathia is the Women Care Certification her farm obtained, which integrates women into the supply value chain, ensures access to the benefits of global trade and strengthens sound policies to promote gender equality which enables women to participate as equal partners in the industry. Whew! She is doing foundational work which generations of communities will benefit from. 

My favorite moment of my time with Kathia was during the IWCA Breakfast, a special fundraiser celebrating the International Women's Coffee Alliance, where one of Kathia's coffees had been chosen to be served during the meal. When they announced the producer and honored her, you could see how moved she was by love and pride. In all of this - all of these efforts to make a change, to build relationships, to carry on a legacy - everything was born out of devotion and passion for the land and for the coffee. 

This special microlot is her motherly love letter to coffee and kiddos, and we couldn't be happier to be a part of it.