Fazenda Santa Inês

Santa Inês is part of the Sertão group of coffees associated with Carmo Coffee, the exporters we work with in Brazil. There are five cultivars planted at Santa Inês: Yellow Bourbon, Red Bourbon, Yellow Catuaí, Acaiá and Mundo Novo. We travel to visit Carmo Coffees and the farms from which we buy every year, and every year we choose the Yellow Bourbon for its sweetness and caramel flavours. In addition to having this coffee on our counter, we will use it as component in our Monmouth Espresso – the full sweetness and body gives a super base to an espresso. Over the last few years Francisco Isidro Dias Pereira, with farm manager Rubio Junqueira, have made many improvements to planting, pruning, and processing. Coffee in this micro-region of Brazil is picked by rakes and often with the use of ladders. The rakes move like giant hands through the coffee trees shaking loose the cherries which fall onto peneria screens. The penerias are large circular sieves, and the coffee is tossed into the air repeatedly to shake disperse any leaves and debris. There is quite a skill to it, the penerias are not light and you don’t want coffee flying off into the air!