The highlands around San Vito are coffee country, and the farms here carry an unusual origin story. In the 1950s, a group of Italian immigrants — many of them from the Veneto region — arrived with a government concession and set about clearing forest to plant coffee. The Coto Brus valley turned out to be well-suited: elevation around 1,000 metres, reliable rain, rich volcanic soil. The cooperatives and family farms they founded still operate today.
Some farms welcome visitors for informal tours during harvest season, roughly November through February, when the red cherries are picked by hand and carried to the beneficio for processing. The smell of fermenting pulp and drying beans drifts across the valley on cool mornings. Ask locally about which farms are receiving visitors — there is no formal agritourism infrastructure, but the Italian-descended families are generally hospitable to travellers who show genuine interest.
The coffee sold in San Vito's shops and sodas is typically local and good. The espresso tradition the Italian founders brought with them never entirely died out, and a proper short black here is a more authentic experience than the instant Nescafé served in many other Costa Rican towns.