La Fortuna Coffee & Chocolate Tour: A Deep Dive into Costa Rican Craft
- Dr. K.
- 6 days ago
- 4 min read
Costa Rica is known for a few things that reliably make people smile: cloud forests, hummingbirds, hot springs, and the deep, steady aroma of freshly roasted coffee drifting through an open-air kitchen.
But until I spent an afternoon on the Don Juan Coffee and Chocolate Tour outside La Fortuna, I didn’t understand how culturally layered these everyday flavors really are—or how interactive the learning can be when a guide hands you cacao beans and says, “Here, make your own chocolate.”
What begins as a simple walk through a shaded garden quickly turns into an unexpectedly rich lesson in agriculture, culture, and identity. You’re not trekking through vast plantations; instead, Don Juan has created a small but revealing ecosystem—Arabica coffee plants on one side, cacao pods on the other, all rooted in the volcanic soil that has shaped Costa Rica’s flavor story for generations. For our group of roughly fifteen people, the tour felt intimate, conversational, and wonderfully hands-on.
The pace of this tour is relaxed and inclusive, making it well-suited for mixed-age groups, multi-day tour travelers, and anyone curious about food culture without wanting a physically demanding experience.
Where Coffee Isn’t Just a Drink—It’s a National Legacy
Our guide began with coffee, which in Costa Rica is far more than a commodity: it is heritage, law, livelihood, and export identity all at once. The country’s commitment to quality runs so deep that for more than thirty years, only 100% Arabica coffee could be legally cultivated here. The ban on Robusta—the higher-yield but lower-flavor variety—was lifted only in 2018, and even now it’s grown sparingly in specific zones where Arabica struggles.
Everywhere else, Costa Rica doubles down on the good stuff: Caturra, Catuai, Typica, Bourbon, Geisha, Villa Sarchí, and a growing number of carefully developed hybrids.
You hear all of this while standing inches away from fruit-laden branches. The cherries glow red and taut in the soft humidity, and the guide explains how growers are experimenting with disease-resistant varietals, not to compromise flavor but to survive changing weather patterns. It’s both science and culture, all rooted in soil enriched by ancient eruptions.
And yet, for all this national pride, most Costa Rican coffee never stays in Costa Rica.
The country produces a little more than a million bags each year, and the majority is exported—primarily to the United States and Europe—because high-grade Arabica fetches premium prices abroad. Locals of course drink coffee (often brewed in the beloved chorreador, the simple wooden stand and cloth filter that produces a delicate, clean cup), but much of what Costa Ricans buy is blended with imported beans. The top lots, the small-farm microlots that define Costa Rica’s reputation, almost always leave the country.
Standing there, watching the guide brew a chorreador demonstration, I understood why.
The ritual is slow, aromatic, and intentional; the knowledge behind it is inherited. But the beans themselves have a global life.
From Coffee to Chocolate: A Different Plant, A Parallel Story
Halfway through, the tour shifts from coffee to cacao, and the atmosphere changes entirely. If coffee is grounded in tradition, cacao is a story of revival. Once abundant in Costa Rica, cacao was devastated by disease in the late 20th century. What remains now is a much smaller but increasingly passionate community of growers focused on quality and origin.
We cracked open cacao pods, tasted the pulp, examined fermenting beans, and watched roasted nibs transform under our own hands into warm, coarse chocolate. It’s the kind of activity that pulls you into the process rather than placing you outside it. And while Costa Rica’s cacao production is modest compared to giants like Ivory Coast or Ghana, its artisanal chocolate scene is gaining momentum, fueled by the same factors that shaped its coffee industry: terroir, experimentation, sustainability, and an appreciation for craft.
Our guide explained how small farms across Costa Rica are replanting cacao with disease-resistant strains, improving fermentation standards, and selling directly to chocolatiers who value transparency. It’s a quiet resurgence, but a fascinating one.
A Landscape of Innovation Behind the Scenes
If you follow the coffee world, Costa Rica often appears in conversations about innovation. Large buyers like Starbucks operate research farms here—Hacienda Alsacia being the best-known—where experts study hybrid varieties and explore ways to protect Arabica from pests and climate stress. Meanwhile, thousands of small farmers continue to produce the country’s most sought-after beans on plots often measuring just a few hectares.
That dual system—global innovation on one side, smallholders on the other—defines much of Costa Rica’s agricultural rhythm. It also explains why the tasting at the end of the tour feels so meaningful. You’re not just sipping coffee and chocolate. You’re tasting the output of a country balancing tradition, global demand, environmental risk, and cultural pride.
About the Tour
The Don Juan Coffee & Chocolate Tour lasts about two hours, but it’s remarkably efficient in how much it teaches. It’s accessible (the paths are flat and shaded), bilingual (guides switch seamlessly between English and Spanish), and interactive in a way that feels playful rather than staged. Making your own chocolate is fun. Learning how to use a chorreador feels like stepping into someone’s kitchen. Walking past Arabica plants while hearing why Costa Rica once banned Robusta connects you to a deeper agricultural narrative.
It’s the kind of activity that fits perfectly into a La Fortuna itinerary—especially the last tour of the day, when the light is soft and the mosquitoes politely remind you to bring repellent. More importantly, it’s the kind of tour that shifts how you think about flavor. Coffee and chocolate stop being everyday comforts and become stories of soil, climate, history, resilience, and human hands.
I walked in expecting a tasting.I walked out understanding a country.
Unquestionably, travel feels richer when you understand the everyday rituals that ground a place—coffee, cacao, and the people who turn them into something meaningful.
