We take care to buy the good stuff around here, and sourcing coffee with this amount of care means our team visits producers at their farms year after year.
Meet Ernest, our Head of Coffee at Coffee Supreme. In between sourcing and tasting delicious coffee, Ernest leads strategic planning and manages our procurement and roasting teams. Late last year, Ernest headed to Brazil to check in with our suppliers and taste their latest harvest, which have now started to arrive at HQ. With our Brazil coffees releasing soon, Ernest has shared the ins and outs of his trip. Over to you, Ernest.
October brings the start of our green coffee buying season with Brazil first off the rank. Harvest season has just finished, and there is plenty of coffee to taste. We commenced our trip by visiting Fazenda Sao Silvestre in Carmo do Paraiba, Minas Gerais. Sao Silvestre is a recent addition to the Coffee Supreme family but has been producing quality coffee for over a century.
Our next visit was to Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza (FAF), in Mococa. Our relationship with FAF spans 13 years, and we have sourced blenders and micro-lots during this time. On this visit, we were able to sample some exquisite experimental lots which were reminiscent of Kenyan coffees. Who would have thought this of Brazil? FAF is heavily focused on sustainable, organic agriculture, and their farm in Mococa presents a thriving ecosystem for flora and fauna. Mornings are greeted with a cacophony of birdsong and flowers of every colour. The coffees that FAF produce are delicious and we’re proud to have them on our menu, both as the backbone of our Brazil Blend and as one of our most-loved filter coffees, Bob-o-link.
Our second week saw us visiting long-time suppliers Fazenda Capadocia and Jaguara Coffee, based near the town of Varginha. They have a new collaboration underway in a secluded location, on a hilltop about an hour and a half’s drive from the highway down a dirt road. If location can guarantee a high-quality crop, this place is it.
We dropped in on the local school, which Augusto of Capadocia has been helping with. The children who go to this school all come from poor families, and providing motivation for them to stay in school is one of the key challenges. One of the newer initiatives is for the school to introduce an improved English language class which will hopefully allow students to be motivated and open to more opportunities in the future.
A quick visit to Espirito Santo was a welcome surprise. Traditionally associated with robusta (orconilon as it is called in Brazil), a new generation of farmers are embracing specialty and making the most of the terroir. The hilly terrain and relatively close location to the coast presented a diverse range of micro-climates very supportive of producing high-quality coffee.
Our final evening saw us mixing with the judging panel for the 2023 Brazil Cup of Excellence competition. It was a good opportunity to catch up with old friends, make new ones and exchange news from around the world of coffee.
As a first-time visitor to Brazil, I was impressed by the range and diversity of coffees we tasted. The old stereotype of Brazil producing generic-style coffees is well and truly in the past, as producers have pursued quality and embraced new processing techniques. Having seen up close the efforts our producer partners go through to produce a good crop while ensuring they live up to their environmental and social responsibilities is reassuring and inspiring.
