Preparation: Natural – beans are patio-dried with mucilage intact while they are still in the cherry
About the people who grow it:
The Mogiana region, which runs along the São Paulo and Minas Gerais border, is home to some of the most predictably sweet and well-structured naturals produced in Brazil. The area is rich in coffee history. In 1872, twenty-one coffee farmers were the first to invest in a new railroad in northeastern Sao Paulo, Brazil, near the border with Minas Gerias. The new railway was christened “Mogiana Railroad Company,” and it was so important that the region would take the name as its own. After a century of operation, the tracks had been largely dismantled and the name changed, but the coffee region kept its adopted moniker. Building a railroad to get coffee to market is indicative of the innovation producers in the Mogiana region have always brought to coffee farming.
This coffee comes to us from Cooxupé, a cooperative in the Sul de Minas, Cerrado & São Paulo regions of Brazil. Originally founded in 1932 as an agricultural cooperative, in 1957 it officially became a Regional Cooperative of Coffee Growers.
All 13 thousand (and growing!) members of Cooxupé are offered a series of free guidance and assistance for farming. Cooxupé employs over 200 people agronomists, agricultural technicians and veterinarians who visit the properties and assist the farmers of Cooxupé. Together, they follow the entire process of specialty green coffee production, from planting to harvesting and post harvesting.
Cooxupé also takes their social responsibility towards their members seriously. In the rural areas where the cooperative works, they have developed health and scholarship programs and provided education and agricultural training. In these trainings, they put focus on the younger generations of coffee farmers and on building sustainable farming systems. An extremely successful program of theirs, called Escola Consciente, won the Andef Award in 2014, which is one of the most important awards in Brazilian agriculture.
About me:
Since 2004 I have been a home coffee-roasting enthusiast, always in search of high-quality, socially-responsible, and environmentally-sustainable green coffee beans. I discovered the best way to do this is nurture relationships with importers who care as much about ethical coffee as I do and to rely on their on-the-ground knowledge of coffee farms around the world. So in 2008, I started buying green coffee in quantity and reselling to home coffee roasters like myself. This little side business has brought me great satisfaction, as I now have ready access to an outstanding variety of coffee myself, and I have helped many other home roasters (even a few micro-roasting businesses) get great coffee for great prices.
My guiding principles: