Brazil is huge by every metric: geographically vast with people who are hugely warm and generous, and it's also the world's biggest producer of coffee. This heft is felt not just on how coffee is traded day to day (arguably an unhelpful influence, but that's a discussion for another time!), but on how we build our business strategy and position ourselves as a coffee importer. Our relationships in Brazil are fundamental to our identity as a business, and the Brazilian coffees we buy forms the backbone of our offering in our respective consuming countries.
Over 13 days, we visited 10 farms, 4 dry mills, 5 exporting companies and spent 50 hours travelling in a car covering 3,200km. All of which is to say, I barely scratched the surface of building an appreciation of the work that happens there, and the intricacies of the supply chains we have built. If I haven't already laboured the point too much, I'll say outright that my experience in Brazil was too vast to cover in any detail here. So, let me spend the rest of this update introducing three of the suppliers we spent time with and celebrating the people that make these suppliers a privilege to work with.
Academia do Cafe
Family Operated | Cafe & Roastery School | Bica Corrida
Academia do Cafe
Family Operated | Cafe & Roastery School | Bica Corrida
A family operation run by the larger-than-life Bruno de Sousa, his wife Deborah, daughter Julia and son in-law Ivan. I flew to Belo Horizonte shortly after arriving in Brazil (albeit without my luggage...) and was collected by Bruno at the airport before driving directly to the Academia cafe/roastery/school. As a hub for specialty coffee and the specialty coffee community in the city, it was an inspiring space to spend time there. The following day, we made the trek to Campos Altos in the Cerrado region of Minas Gerais. This is where Bruno was brought up, and their family farm, Fazenda Esperanca is located on the outskirts of town.
Dedicated to producing high quality microlots, the de Sousa's grow a range of varietals (Icatu, Red and Yellow Catuai and Arara to name only a few). As I learned is typical for producers in the area, Esperanca has a small dry mill of its own where they take fully "processed" and dried cherries or parchment coffee (depending on the process) and mill it into Bica Corrida - a new term to me and a part of the process I hadn't previously been aware of. Bica Corrida is effectively unsorted coffee beans, complete with defects and not sorted by screen size.
CARPEC
Founded 1965 | Boozy & Fruit Forward | Meaty Lunches
CARPEC is a co-operative based in Carmo de Paranaiba (hometown of our very own Fernando Quieroz!). It was founded in 1965 as a co-op for members representing a range of agricultural businesses, and they added coffee production to their activities in 1989. They opened their dedicated coffee warehouse and processing facility in 2019, where they have capacity to store 300,000 bags and process coffees purchased from their members on state-of-the-art milling equipment. It is at this facility that our time with CARPEC and their coffee team began.
Our connection to CARPEC came via our friendship with the inimitable Thiago (Rasta) Dias, who by sheer coincidence, is the nephew of Bruno de Sousa from Academia do Cafe. We met Thiago from previously dealings, and kept in touch with him when he moved home from Alta Mogiana to the Cerrado region. After a presentation introducing us to the company by their General Manager, Helder, we had coffee with Vanessa (Logistics and English-speaker extraordinaire) and some of the coffee quality team, before visiting two producers who are members of the cooperative operating at different scales.
Our connection to CARPEC came via our friendship with the inimitable Thiago (Rasta) Dias, who by sheer coincidence, is the nephew of Bruno de Sousa from Academia do Cafe. We met Thiago from previously dealings, and kept in touch with him when he moved home from Alta Mogiana to the Cerrado region. After a presentation introducing us to the company by their General Manager, Helder, we had coffee with Vanessa (Logistics and English-speaker extraordinaire) and some of the coffee quality team, before visiting two producers who are members of the cooperative operating at different scales.
On the smaller end, we spent the morning with Tereza Cristina at Fazenda Olhos D'Agua. The farm is 120 hectares in total, with 70 of those planted with coffee (some of which we traversed on the roof of their mechanical harvester!). After a typically massive and meaty lunch, we visited Mariana Veloso at Fazenda Santa Cecilia. Part of a family-owned group of farms in the area (eight in total), one of the largest coffee companies in Brazil, producing 150,000 bags annually. The scale of production was truly something to behold.
We travelled back to CARPEC HQ for a tour of their stunning processing facility and warehouse (complete with misting for humidity regulation) and spent the early evening cupping a selection of their coffees in the lab. Over two tables, we cupped coffees ranging from classic Cerrado-profile blenders that exist in the grey area between commercial and specialty quality, to experimentally processed microlots that are boozy and fruit-forward, right through to extremely refined, high quality microlots that will be entered in the Cup of Excellence. As a first-time visitor to Brazil, the range of profiles was eye-opening, and I was impressed by the quality and consistency they demonstrated.
Capricornio
Fear of Heights | Marriage Proposals | Regenerative Farming
Another supplier that has come to us through an old friendship with Otavio Sandrin. Octavio stayed in touch with us when he moved on to take up the Commercial Manager role at Capricornio, based in Ourinhos, Parana State. In addition to their mainstay coffees (Agata, Esmeralda and Sweet Espresso to name a few), they offer their own range of profiles that they build by blending lots sourced from their range of producing partners across the country to order, as well as producer/farm specific lots (most excitingly Luis and Flavia Saldana at Fazenda California).
Our time with Capricornio started with Otavio collecting us in Varginha and driving the 7 hours to Ourinhos on what turned out to be the day the company was celebrating Festa Junina, a mid-winter celebration that sees parties happening throughout June (and apparently July...) all over the country. After being taken on a tour of Capricornio headquarters including their offices, QA lab, warehouse and milling facility (again, state-of-the-art equipment), we joined the festivities. All of the staff and their families were having a great time, eating an interesting Brazilian take on hot dogs, lots of cake and beer, dancing, performing an elaborate fake wedding ceremony (I still don't understand why...) and indulging in some general merriment.
The following day we visited a producer named Marcel, the plan being to have a quick look around his farm before heading off to have lunch somewhere nearby. This all changed when upon arriving at the farm, we were greeted by a man wielding beers and stoking a roaring fire in a bbq with one of the largest chunks of beef I've ever beheld. We ended up spending several hours drinking, eating steaks and hearing about Marcel's life, after seeing his beautiful farm, then were whisked away for some entertainment Otavio had organised for the early evening. This involved getting into a basket and flying high above the rolling hills to take in the scenery from a hot air balloon.
In one corner was Guy (LCM AUS) trembling with a fear of heights, and in the other corner was Otavio (not a man to let an opportunity go to waste) trembling with nervousness before proposing to his partner, the lovely Leticia. She assures me it wasn't just the pressure of an audience at over 100m altitude (!), they are planning their wedding celebration for this time in 2025.
In one corner was Guy (LCM AUS) trembling with a fear of heights, and in the other corner was Otavio (not a man to let an opportunity go to waste) trembling with nervousness before proposing to his partner, the lovely Leticia. She assures me it wasn't just the pressure of an audience at over 100m altitude (!), they are planning their wedding celebration for this time in 2025.
Day three involved a back-to-school experience at Fazenda California with the founder of Capricornio, Luis Saldana. He is operating at the vanguard of the industry, implementing rigorously tested agronomic practices developed by him and his wife Flavia. In addition to this work on the farm/production level, he has built a new washing/processing facility designed by Leonardo Sanchez, an engineer working in the coffee industry based in Costa Rica. This is a truly ground-breaking approach in Brazil; using research undertaken by specialists around the world to inform a regenerative-agricultural approach focused on producing high quality year to year. The results of this approach are shared by Capricornio agronomists with the producers they work with around the country.
Wrap-Up
This only accounts for half the time I spent in Brazil, and it was a truly epic experience. I left with an extra bag (I finally received my luggage on day 10 of the trip!) and a profound love for what is typically looked at as a boring but necessary-for-the-bottom-line-of-a-roastery coffee origin by green coffee buyers.
We have suppliers that are doing great things, through whom we have access to producers that I feel passionate about advocating for. The relationships we have with our Brazilian friends are worth celebrating and I'm looking forward to building links that extend those relationships through to the roasters we work with here in the UK, and our counterparts across the pond in Australia and New Zealand.