June 2023 Discovery Coffee

Brazil - Fazenda Mió Lot C05

CASHEW, RAISIN, MILK CHOCOLATE

OMNI ROAST (What’s an omni roast?)

REGION | Minas Gerais

PROCESS | Natural

SPECIES | Arabica 

VARIETY | Catucai, Bourbon, Mundo Novo

ALTITUDE | 900-1100 MASL

ABOUT FAZENDA MIO

Mió is a coffee farm in Monte Santo de Minas, Brazil, that exports, imports, stores, and sells coffee. Coffee harvested with care by Mió workers.

The farm spans a total of 1,589 hectares. A third of the land is used for the coffee processing and milling facilities, some pasture areas and the plantation of eucalyptus trees, which is home to some lovely bees. The rest of the land is equally divided between coffee trees and the native forest reserve. With plenty of spring water in the estate, one of Mió’s responsibilities is to not only maintain the water flow but to also improve water quality.

Dedicating the same amount of land to the coffee as to the native forest helps preserve the natural characteristics of the area. The farm is located between Southern Minas Gerais and the High Mogiana region. Two distinct terrains, one brings a citric acidity, the other a full body and sweetness to Mió’s coffee.

They pride themselves on a 100% traceability guarantee for the entire crop every year. Each stage of the journey, from where the cherries were harvested, which trucks moved them, how and when they were processed, is tracked using satellite imagery. Being a technology-driven farm improves the farmworkers’ quality of life, ensures an abundant harvest and guarantees the highest processing standards for the crop.

Their state-of-the-art processing facilities include a wet-mill, concrete patios, raised beds, ambient-air drying rotating machines, wood silos, cross-beater hullers and a density separator. The beans are then sorted further according to size and colour using an oscillating screen and optical-electronic system.

To learn more about Fazenda Mió and their ambitious plans for the future, read our interview with Ana Luiza Pellicer, COO of Mió and daughter of the farming family.

HISTORY OF COFFEE IN BRAZIL

It’s hard to imagine the “beginnings'' of coffee in Brazil, as the two things have become so synonymous. The first coffee plants were reportedly brought in the relatively early 18th century, spreading from the northern state of Pará in 1727 all the way down to Rio de Janeiro within 50 years. Initially, coffee was grown almost exclusively for domestic consumption by European colonists, but as demand for coffee began to increase in United States and on the European continent in the early-mid 19th century, coffee supplies elsewhere in the world started to decline: Major outbreaks of coffee-leaf rust practically decimated the coffee-growing powerhouses of Java and Ceylon, creating an opening for the burgeoning coffee industry in Central and South America. Brazil’s size and the variety of its landscapes and microclimates showed incredible production potential, and its proximity to the United States made it an obvious and convenient export-import partner for the Western market.

In 1820, Brazil was already producing 30 percent of the world’s coffee supply, but by 1920, it accounted for 80 percent of the global total.

Since the 19th century, the weather in Brazil has been one of the liveliest topics of discussion among traders and brokers, and a major deciding factor in the global market trends and pricing that affect the coffee-commodity market. Incidents of frost and heavy rains have caused coffee yields to wax and wane over the past few decades, but the country is holding strong as one of the two largest coffee producers annually, along with Colombia.

One of the other interesting things Brazil has contributed to coffee worldwide is the number of varieties, mutant-hybrids, and cultivars that have sprung from here, either spontaneously or by laboratory creation. Caturra (a dwarf mutation of Bourbon variety), Maragogype (an oversize Typica derivative), and Mundo Novo (a Bourbon-Typica that is also a parent plant of Catuai, developed by Brazilian agro-scientists) are only a few of the seemingly countless coffee types that originated in Brazil and, now, spread among coffee-growing countries everywhere.