Brazil Sítio Fazendinha

We try not to keep coffee on the shelves for long, so if we don't have a particular coffee in stock, we have to replenish the order after the roasting day. We roast on Tuesdays and Thursdays, pack the coffee and send it out on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Sítio Fazendinha is a farm located in Conceição das Pedras, in the Sul de Minas region of Brazil. It covers 16 hectares and has been run by Emilio Raimundo Faria and his wife Rosana since 2013. Although they started with a 50-hectare farm, difficult beginnings forced them to give away most of the land. The remainder - the one they still farm today - became the site of a coffee transformation.

Although mechanical coffee harvesting is prevalent in Brazil, Emilio opted for the costly and time-consuming manual harvesting of only ripe cherries for selected batches. This approach has significantly increased the quality of his coffees, giving them purity and greater intensity of flavour. This effect is further enhanced by anaerobic fermentation. While you may associate it with pronounced acidity, strong alcoholic notes and sometimes even an unpleasant profile, our experience shows that this processing in Brazil serves a different purpose. It is not about achieving unprecedented 'funky' profiles. Rather, it allows the profile to be 'smoothed' or 'honed' - giving the coffee greater purity and clarity, adding fruity notes to the characteristic Brazilian chocolate and nut. In addition, the micro-organisms responsible for fermentation produce esters that enter the bean after roasting increase the perception of sweetness.

And Emilio and Rosana's story deserves a few more sentences. They bought the farm in 2013 by mortgaging their house and cars as collateral. Their first harvest was promising, but the very next season the quality and quantity of the crop collapsed. They were unable to pay the instalments, lost their house and gave away most of the land. They were left with only 16 hectares - and the decision whether to give up or fight for a fresh start.

The couple decided to uproot the existing coffee trees (mostly of the Sarchimor variety) and plant the Yellow Bourbon variety. They obtained the seedlings through the contacts of Emilio's father, who runs a coffee tree nursery. At the time, Emilio and Rosana were living with their three children in a rented house, supporting themselves with seasonal work, inter alia. harvesting coffee for other farmers. For several years they waited for the new bushes to bear fruit.

In 2017, Emilio harvested his first major crop from the new trees and reluctantly entered a sample into a competition organised by specialty exporter Cafebras. Reluctantly - because, in practice, he was almost forced to do so, he didn't believe it would be a success. To his surprise, the coffee won the highest score - 90.25 points - and first place. His reward was a trip to Sweden and Norway, where he met with roasters buying his beans. This gave the impetus for further development. Today, Emilio and Rosana continue to invest in quality, build a new home and passionately produce coffees that have gained recognition in the specialty world.