We taste: white grape, praline, cocoa

Farm: Beneficio Presente do Sol (over 2,000 smallholder coffee farmers)
Region: Heliodora, Mantiqueira, Minas Gerais
Processing Method: Natural
Elevation: 1,150-1,200 msl
Variety: Yellow Bourbon

Growing great coffee cherries isn’t where the work ends. Smallholder coffee farmers who grow high quality coffee in some regions can have difficulty transporting their ripe, hand-picked coffee cherries to a mill where they can be further sorted, washed, and processed in a timely fashion at a high quality standard. An entire region’s coffee quality can suffer if they don’t have access to the resources required to bring that coffee across the finish line, so to speak.

The Mantiqueira micro-region of Brazil is home to over 2,000 smallholder coffee farmers with a quality potential that is deserving of further exploration. Our exporting partners at CarmoCoffees recognized this potential and decided to build two strategically placed mills (called "beneficios") with washing and processing capabilities, strategically selected for their accessibility to the region's coffee growers. This coffee comes to us from one of those mills, Beneficio Presente do Sol, located in the city of Heliodora.

The proximity of the beneficio provides the region's farmers with access to modern equipment for processing where there was otherwise a barrier to entry due to lack of knowledge, time, budget, infrastructure, and the price of the labor involved with processing at a quality standard. We’re happy to see the farmers in this region reach their full potential and reap the rewards of their hard work.