Coffee Landscapes: Specialty Coffee, Terroir, and Traceability in Costa Rica

Original Article Authors Julia Smith First published: 9 January 2018Full publication history DOI: 10.1111/cuag.12103 View/save citation Cited by (CrossRef): 0 articles Check for updates Citation tools Julia Smith is an Associate Professor of Geography and Anthropology at Eastern Washington University. Her research interests include food and drink as well as the economics of farm life in Latin America and the United States. Abstract Coffee with the right traits can command impressive prices in the specialty coffee market. While much of the attention to terroir—the taste of place—in coffee has focused on region, the details of place matter too. For farmers, paying attention to the details of coffee landscapes is important to create the distinctive flavors prized in these markets. This article explores how farmers in the Tarrazú coffee region of Costa Rica use systems of traceability based on details of the landscape and the coffee that grows in it to create coffee that “tastes of something.” Instead of seeing traceability and terroir as different kinds of production with different logic, these farmers see traceability as a key piece of terroir-based high-value production.