CULTURE AND ITS CREATORS
THE LIVING COFFEE LIBRARY
with Gonzalo
A private journey into coffee biodiversity, rare species and the extraordinary living collection behind every cup.
MEET GONZALO
_________Every coffee tree in Gonzalo’s garden has a story.
Over decades, Gonzalo and his wife Fanny have built an extraordinary living collection of coffee species and varieties from around the world — a place where coffee is understood not simply as a crop, but as an astonishingly diverse family of plants.
Walk with Gonzalo and one tree might lead you to Ethiopia. Another to Sudan, Kenya, Yemen or somewhere entirely unexpected. Each has its own character, history, flavour and reason for being preserved.
His fascination lies in those differences.
Through The Current, Gonzalo invites a small number of guests into this remarkable world: to walk among rare coffee trees, taste the diversity hidden within one of the world’s most familiar drinks and discover why protecting it may matter more than ever.
WORLD: Culture and Its Creators
FOCUS: Coffee • Biodiversity • Legacy
LOCATION: Costa Rica
IDEAL FOR: Coffee lovers • Curious travellers • Gardeners • Food lovers • Families
“Coffee is so much bigger than the cup. Every tree carries a story of where it came from, what makes it different and why it might matter for the future.”
STEP INTO GONZALO’S WORLD
A sample rhythm for the experience. Every private day is adapted to the guests, ocean conditions and the season.
3:30pm
Meet Gonzalo over coffee, although perhaps not one you’ve tasted before. Before heading into the coffee plantation, begin with the story of coffee itself: how a plant that originated in Africa travelled around the world, why only a tiny fraction of its extraordinary diversity reaches our cups, and what first inspired Gonzalo and Fanny to begin collecting it.
9:00am
Walk into an extraordinary garden where coffee species and varieties from across the world grow side by side. With Gonzalo as your guide, discover plants that look, grow and behave remarkably differently from the coffee most of us recognise.
Taste fruit from the tree when the season allows. Compare leaves, cherries and growing habits. Hear the stories of where individual plants originated and how they found their way to this corner of Costa Rica. What begins as a walk through a coffee farm quickly becomes a journey around the world.
9:30am
Return from the garden for a private comparative tasting.
Explore coffees from different species and varieties side by side, learning how genetics, growing conditions, processing and roasting can completely transform what you experience in the cup. Rather than being told what you should taste, Gonzalo encourages you to notice the differences for yourself. Sweetness. Acidity. Aroma. Texture. And perhaps flavours you never expected to find in coffee at all.
10:30am
Choose a young coffee tree from the collection and head back into the garden with Gonzalo. Together, plant it in its permanent home. Your tree becomes part of the landscape - cared for alongside the wider collection and continuing to grow long after your visit has ended. Its location and variety are recorded so that, one day, you can return and find it again.
A small act, perhaps. But one with roots.
12:00pm
Gather for a beautifully prepared private lunch surrounded by the garden. The menu takes inspiration from coffee in unexpected ways - perhaps coffee blossom, cascara, coffee cherry, carefully selected beans or flavours that naturally complement different coffees woven subtly through the meal.
Each course is paired with a different expression from the collection, allowing coffee to move beyond the end of a meal and become part of the entire table.
Over lunch, conversation continues with Gonzalo and Fanny: the stories behind the collection, the plants they have searched for, the surprises they’ve encountered and what decades spent growing coffee have taught them.
1:30pm
Finish where the day began: around a cup of coffee. Only now, it means something entirely different.
Before leaving, receive a small tasting collection selected from the garden along with the details of the tree you planted - its species, origin and location within the collection.
What you’ll leave with
A rare opportunity to explore coffee beyond the familiar Arabica and Robusta story.
A guided journey through an extraordinary living collection of coffee biodiversity.
A private comparative tasting of unusual species and varieties.
A coffee tree planted in the garden in your name, with its story and location recorded.
A beautifully curated selection of coffee to take home.
And perhaps most importantly, the realisation that something you encounter every morning contains an entire world most of us never knew existed.
Why Gonzalo
Most coffee experiences begin with a cup.
Gonzalo’s begins with the tree.
Spend time with him and coffee quickly becomes something much bigger: botany, biodiversity, geography, flavour, climate and decades of patient cultivation.
This isn’t simply an opportunity to learn how coffee is grown.
It is an invitation into a living library, guided by the person who has spent years building it.
Beyond the experience
Coffee’s future may depend upon its diversity.
Around the world, changing climates, pests and disease are placing increasing pressure on the narrow range of coffee varieties grown commercially.
Living collections preserve something invaluable: genetic diversity, knowledge and possibilities for a crop whose future is still being written.
By creating meaningful value around this collection, The Current helps demonstrate that biodiversity is not simply something to protect in the abstract. It can be tasted, understood, shared and celebrated.
And every guest leaves something behind too.
A tree.
Growing quietly among thousands of others.
Becoming part of the living collection for the next generation.
Ready to step into Gonzalo’s world?
Every Current experience is completely private and thoughtfully tailored to each guest.
Tell us who you are travelling with and when you will be in Costa Rica, and we will begin creating your day.