Cascara: Coffee Cherry Tea Gift Set

Fincas Mierisch, is a family business that operates a few farms in the Matagalpa Region of Nicaragua. We featured their coffee in summer of 2021 and jumped at the chance to work with them again. They are extremely dedicated to the coffee community and always on top of the latest innovations in farming and processing. Erwin Mierisch was kind enough to appear in a City Boy video last year to talk about how to taste coffee like a pro. This tea came from a lot of coffee featuring 50% Maracaturra variety and 50% Caturra variety and was processed naturally on raised drying beds. After about two months of drying, the fruit was separated from the coffee seed. The seed went on to be coffee and the dried fruit wound up as cascara tea in our gift set. This cascara is bright, sweet, and citrusy with subtle notes of caramel and peach. Helsar de Zarcero is a micromill in Llano Bonito de Naranjo, Costa Rica and the result of the collaborative efforts of Ricardo Perez Barrantes and brothers Marvin and Felipe Rodriguez. They built Helsar de Zarcero to have more control over the processing of their coffees and became masters at their new craft. This cascara is a labor of love. Since 2012, the University of Costa Rica and Helsar Micromill have been researching technologies that could process specialized cascara that was farmed and milled with the intention of being cascara tea, rather than a by-product of the coffee seed. Caturra, Catuai, and Villalobos cherries from their farms, Fincas Santa Lucía and Anonos were picked and later that day, the fruit was removed from the seeds, washed, pasteurized, and dehydrated.This cascara is sweet and syrupy with notes of raisin, cherry, apricot, and cranberry.