Francisco Mena started in coffee as a messenger for a local exporter. He went on to co-found Exclusive Coffees, give Costa Rica’s micro-mill revolution its name, and win the Costa Rica Cup of Excellence in his second harvest as a farmer.
From messenger to exporter
Francisco grew up in Golfito, on Costa Rica’s southern Pacific coast, where his father worked for the United Fruit Company. His first job in coffee had him zipping through the mountain roads on a bicycle, collecting green coffee samples from producers. He studied business administration and worked across coffee exporting, including a spell at Starbucks in Costa Rica, and came out of it knowing where the industry was failing smallholder farmers, and what a better model might look like.
In 2008, he co-founded Exclusive Coffees with Juan Ramón Alvarado, starting out of a garage in Escazú with coffee from eight farmers. Exclusive now works directly with over 90 micro-mills, providing milling, quality control, education and market access. It connects Costa Rican producers with specialty roasters around the world, including us. Francisco’s wife, Jennifer, runs export and logistics at Exclusive.
It was also Francisco who coined the term “micro-mill revolution” for the change happening in Costa Rican coffee: the shift from farmers delivering cherry to large co-op mills, where their coffee was blended and their work went unnamed, to farmers processing their own coffee, separating lots by variety and selling directly to international buyers. The phrase stuck.
Finca Sumava de Lourdes
When Francisco took on Sumava in 2015, the farm was mostly abandoned. It was far bigger than he’d pictured, too. As he told the Tico Times, he’d always wanted a farm but “thought it would be 2 to 3 hectares, not 68.”
The name comes from Šumava National Park, the forest that runs along the borders of the Czech Republic, Germany and Austria, chosen by the Czech investor who bought the farm. It sits between 1,670 and 1,790 metres in Costa Rica’s West Valley, on National Tertiary Route 709, a road lined with Cup of Excellence-winning farms.
Sumava is two farms either side of a road: Finca Monte Llano Bonito (nine plots) and Finca Monte Lourdes (six plots), with each plot planted by variety. Mario Mena, who has been at Sumava since the beginning, manages it day to day. The farm uses eco-pulpers, recycles water through retention fields and fertilises organically, guided by detailed soil analysis.
Award-winning from the start
Sumava placed 13th in the 2015 Costa Rica Cup of Excellence, Francisco’s first harvest there. In 2016 it won, with a Caturra lot from Monte Llano Bonito that scored 93.41, at the time the second-highest score ever given to a Costa Rican coffee. Francisco processed it with what he calls “sweet sugar” fermentation: after pulping and washing, he put the honey water from pulping, which is normally thrown away, back in with the beans to ferment. The judges found it complex and floral, with molasses and blueberry. Not bad for a new farmer.
Varieties and processing
Sumava grows Caturra, Villa Sarchí, Pacamara, Mokka, H3, SL28, Geisha, Java, Sidra and Typica. Cool winds from both the Pacific and Atlantic slow cherry maturation and give the sugars time to develop.
Processing at Sumava specialises in honey and natural methods, with drying on raised beds, patios and in greenhouses. The farm is also a testing ground for aerobic, anaerobic and lactic fermentations. The mill handles coffee from a number of smaller farms nearby as well as Sumava’s own, and that has given the team room to experiment in a careful, controlled way. Out of that work, overseen by Mario, have come two tightly controlled styles.
Black Moon is an extended black honey that borrows elements of the lactic process Sumava used to run. The coffee is depulped with as much mucilage left on as possible and fermented for five days in closed, cool tanks with no water. After a rinse it goes onto raised beds, comes off after three or four days to rest in sealed bags for 15 days, then goes back out to finish drying. Black Cherry follows the same approach as a full natural, with the whole cherry left intact. A Black Moon SL28 goes into Humbug, our limited-edition blend for December 2026.
Community and education
Sumava is also a hub for the wider coffee community. One standout programme is a partnership with Spoon, a Costa Rican coffee company, which brings baristas to the farm several times across the production cycle to see every stage of it for themselves. As baristas ourselves, once upon a time, we can only say: we wish that had existed for us.
Producer overview
- Country: Costa Rica
- Region: West Valley
- Province: Alajuela
- Canton: Naranjo
- District: Lourdes de Naranjo
- Owner: Francisco Mena
- Farm manager: Mario Mena
- Farms: Finca Monte Llano Bonito (9 plots) and Finca Monte Lourdes (6 plots), together known as Finca Sumava de Lourdes
- Farm size: 68 hectares
- Elevation: 1,670 to 1,790 m.a.s.l.
- Exporter: Exclusive Coffees (co-founded by Francisco Mena)
- Varietals: Caturra, Villa Sarchí, Pacamara, Mokka, H3, SL28, Geisha, Java, Sidra, Typica
- Processing: Honey, natural, and experimental fermentations including aerobic, anaerobic, lactic, “sweet sugar”, Black Moon and Black Cherry
- Drying: Raised beds, open patios and greenhouse patios
