Casa de Piedra is located in the Tarrazu district, in the micro-region of “Llano Bonito de Leon Cortes”. The farm’s name means “Stone House”, and its yearly production is around the 2500 fanegas, with varietals in production such as Caturra, Yellow Catuai, Red Catuai, Venecia, Villa Sarchi, and Geisha. The Arias family began to mill their cherries themselves in order to gain a better control over their coffee’s quality and fetch better prices. Semi Washed, Honey, and Natural are some of the processes most popular processes for Casa de Piedra, but they also process some very nice anaerobic fermentation coffees. In addition, Gerardo Arias recently obtained his Q grader and Q processing certification which only adds to his already wide knowledge and experience. The cherries are hand-picked before they are immersed in a floatation tank to separate unripe/defective fruits. The cherries were dried with the entire fruit on concrete patios for 8 days, before being transferred to the mechanical dryer where time and temperature are meticulously controlled to achieve the best possible shelf-life. When the coffee reaches the desired humidity point, it is stored and left to rest for 2 months before being hauled. It is then dry-milled, process during which dry husk is removed from the seeds, and the resulting coffee beans go through weight, screen, density, and colour sorting. The farm has 3 rock formations near the river that used to be inhabited by the first settlers. Don Gerardo says that when he was a kid he would go spend summers living in these caves. Mechanical driers are commonly know as Guardiolas in Costa Rica. “G#2” stands for “Guardiola 2” which is Gerardo’s favourite guardiola on his farm and the dryer in which this lot was dried.