10 - Mystic Hills - Costa Rica 2026 (Experimental)

#10 — Mystic Hills
Andrés Felipe Ospina Ramírez   |   Mill: La Candelilla de Tarrazú
Andrés Felipe Ospina is a botanist, marine biologist, and M.Sc. in Ecology who has spent nearly two decades working on coffee quality research across five continents. In 2018, he acquired the land that would become Mystic Hills — an 8-hectare property in Tarrazú at over 2,100 meters above sea level that he had long identified as one of the most exceptional microclimates he had ever encountered. Today the farm covers 16 hectares, of which 8 remain as protected native forest, with 3 hectares under cultivation. The experience of living and working there — cool nights, persistent mist, and a rich local microbiome — is inseparable from what ends up in the cup.
The winning lot uses H3 and H17 varieties in their first commercial harvest, processed through three consecutive spontaneous fermentations at low temperature: an initial 20-hour oxidation phase, 148 hours of anaerobic fermentation, and a final 48-hour oxidation. The entire process was carried out by hand, without dedicated infrastructure, by Andrés Felipe and a small team that included harvesters who traveled from Bocas del Toro. For its founder, Mystic Hills is both a personal dream and a professional statement: that the combination of exceptional terroir, local microorganisms, and rigorous scientific understanding can produce coffees of extraordinary distinction — even from a farm that is, in every practical sense, just getting started.