Specialty coffees fit for a president.

One of Costa Rica's oldest firms, F.J. Orlich offers its cream-of-the-crop beans under the brand FJO. These Strictly Hard Bean (SHB) products are named after the company's founder Francisco J. Orlich, who established the company in 1929, and served as Costa Rica's president from 1962 to 1966. FJO coffees are offered as FJO Reserva Presidente and FJO Sarchi.

FJO coffees are selected only from the middle of the crop when cherries are at their peak, the coffee is hand picked daily and consolidated at receiving stations, from where the Orlich-operated La Giorgia mill in Zaragoza de Palmares picks up the coffee to begin processing.

Unlike larger batches of lesser grade coffees, FJO's are processed separately utilizing more time-intensive, traditional milling techniques. After immature and green cherries are eliminated during the initial stages of wet milling, de-pulped beans are left to rest in fermentation tanks rather than being mechanically de-mucilaged like their high volume counterparts.

All the water used during the wet milling process will then be treated before returning it back to the rivers, in order to minimize coffee-generated pollution. To ensure that cherry quality meets the mill's standards FJ Orlich often finances its farmers with fertilizer, and agro-engineers and several technicians regularly visit the coffee plantations.

FJO Reserva Presidente is grown above 4,000 feet in the highest areas of San Ramon and Palmares in the western part of Costa Rica's central valley. Its beans will be sun-dried in the mill patios for 24/36 hours, a process which guarantees a unique color and a slow maturing to the beans. Depending upon the crop, Carlos Alfaro, the company's general manager, says that only 500 to 1,000 bags will be available each year, with shipments from March through June.

The "Reserva" terminology is borrowed from the wine industry, where vineyards select their top quality production for release in small quantities or "reserve" bottlings, an analogy that Alfaro hopes will be enhanced by the Costa Rica's prominently-displayed coat of arms featured on each bag.

FJO Sarchi is grown on the side of the OAS volcano by small producers, 55 km (37 miles from the capital city of San Jose and near the town that bears its name: Sarchi, one of five towns along Costa Rica's "road of coffee" which leads from the mountains north of San Jose down to the Pacific port of Puntarenas.

This specialty brand has grown to be well recognized in Europe. The Edmonds Group, the exclusive importer of FJO Sarchi for the United Kingdom was able to obtain only two containers of the beans last year. What is FJ Orlich's largest customer to date for FJO Sarchi? "Italy, where ARC imports 2,000-3,000 bags each year." In the U.S., it might be acquired through Atlantic USA.

Quality has always been a high priority in Costa Rica, where today only Arabica beans are allowed to be grown under government mandate. Although coffee ranks as the country's third industry behind banana exports and tourism, coffee production is "highly emotional since coffee is such a part of Costa Rica's history," explains Alfaro.