Chilly nights and warm days in the mist-covered Talamanca mountain range of Costa Rica create little pockets of microclimate perfect for coffee cultivation. Jjust a slight change in elevation allows for extreme biodiversity. Some of the highest elevated coffee farms in the country are in this region near the capital city of San Jose, and those that end up on specialty coffee menus are those designated Strictly Hard Bean (SHB), the kind grown at high elevations where they ripen slowly and thus are very dense and full of flavor.
No surprise that this region has earned a reputation for coffee quality, so much so that almost all offerings from this area are considered specialty grade. In fact, coffees outside the region were sometimes marketed as Tarrazú-grown to bring higher prices.