Brazil is, by some distance, the largest producer of coffee in the world. Despite the loss of an even more commanding market share due to the growth of newer market players such as Vietnam, Brazil’s coffee farms still produce approximately one-third of the world’s annual coffee harvest. But while the Brazilian coffee industry is the most efficient and industrialized in the world, the yield-driven agricultural practices that characterize many of its larger coffee estates have handicapped the quality potential of many Brazilian coffees.

For example, large plantations commonly use harvesting machines that shake the coffee trees to quickly remove all the coffee cherries, irrespective of ripeness. Even on farms where the coffee is hand-picked, a “strip-picking” approach, where underripe, ripe, and overripe coffee cherries are all cleared from the branches in a single pass, is commonly employed. But while it is perhaps understandable that Brazil has not always enjoyed a reputation for producing coffees of the highest quality, it is undeniably true that Brazilian coffees can be absolutely delightful, and this outstanding single-producer lot from Valdeir Cezati is a case in point.

Located just to the northeast of the Matas de Minas region, the state of Espírito Santo is the second highest producing area, by volume, in the country. The vast majority of this volume is not arabica but robusta, which serves as a key ingredient in Brazil’s booming instant coffee industry. But despite robusta’s dominance, many small farms in Espírito Santo do produce arabica, and Passenger’s green buying team has been incredibly impressed with the quality of the coffees that we have tasted from this region in recent years. Two main factors seem to account for this. First, the topography of the region is quite hilly compared to other coffee producing areas in Brazil. The hilly terrain makes it difficult for coffee to be harvested mechanically (better cherry selection) and complicates the formation of large coffee estates, with the consequence that many coffee farms are relatively small and remain family owned and operated. Secondly, Espírito Santo receives more rainfall than many other coffee regions in Brazil and the wet, humid climate makes wet processed coffees much more common in contrast to the naturals and pulped naturals that are ubiquitous in much of the country. Hence the fact that Espírito Santo is increasingly known as the source of lively, sweet, and impressively clean wet processed microlots, providing a compelling retort to reductive and inaccurate assumptions regarding the quality potential of Brazilian coffee.

For the past 8 years, Gilcimar Spavier has worked closely with his father-in-law, Jose Fortunado, to produce high-scoring specialty coffee on his farm in the Castelo district of Brazil's Espirito Santo region. In contrast to our other recent Espirito Santo release, from producer Valdier Cezati, whose farm produces primarily red and yellow catuai, Gilicmar is focused on a lesser-known variety called catucai 785. The catucai variety is itself a cross between two separate varieties, catuai and icatu, with the catuai denoting its relation to the more ubiquitous Arabica species parent variety, bourbon. Icatu, however, is a hybrid of Robusta species coffee and bourbon that was intentionally created at the Agricultural Institute of Campinas in Brazil (IAC) in an effort to gain the leaf rust resistance properties from robusta genetics while maintaining the cup quality potential of bourbon. As a result, with catucai, there are more hearty and disease-resistant Robusta genetics present that make it a popular choice for farmers who can leverage these qualities to maintain good yields despite growing challenges related to climate change. With hybrids such as catucai likely becoming more commonplace in the future as producers adapt to a new climate reality, it's coffees like this one that show the promise of quality despite the urgent need to shift more of our focus towards protecting yield outcomes for farmers.