Coffee Traders |
Quetzal Coffee Company Purveyors of the World's Finest Coffee |
It was in 1854, when a visionary group of local exporters undertook the complex task of exporting coffee directly to London. In this they were helped by the cooperation of William Le Lacheur Lyon, captain of the English ship, "Monarch", who transported several hundred pound sacs to Europe. That enterprise was the success that converted our coffee into the "grain of gold" we know today. The growing and commercialization of coffee changed the face of that humble, one time colony that had dozed lethargically in a corner of the Empire. Our country was modernized. The young Costa Rican intellectuals could now continue their post secondary studies in England and come back as doctors, engineers and entrepreneurs, contributing to the improvement in the life style of all Costa Ricans. The economic bounty that coffee production and commercialization brought allowed us to build the first access to the Atlantic in 1890. Seven years later, the awed inhabitants of the capital city of San Jose were able to attend the memorable inauguration of the National Theater, cradle of Costa Rican culture and a monument to the foresight of the first coffee farmers. Since then, Costa Ricans know that coffee, and the activities forged around it, set the foundations of what we proudly display as ours today. |
History of Costa Rican Coffee |
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Coffee came to Costa Rica in the last decade of the eighteenth century. Its arrival on the national scene was discrete, but definitive. Slowly and with the perseverance that great works demand, coffee growing expanded over the high lands of the Central Valley. The brotherhood of the coffee farmers, both large and small, formed the basis that allowed Costa Rica to become the first Central American country to establish coffee as an industry. |
Our fist export was to Colombia. Those lonely sacs that crossed our borders in 1820, became the ground breaking activity which, from that moment on, changed the course of our lives. By 1823, we were already exporting quality coffee to Chile. There, it was repackaged for sale to England under the name of "Cafe Chileno de Valparaiso". |
