Fazenda Santa Lúcia

Santa Lúcia is planted with six varietals of coffee: Red Bourbon, Yellow Bourbon, Yellow Catuaí, Yellow Catucaí, Acaia and Mundo Novo. We chose the Yellow Bourbon this year for its caramel sweetness and medium to full body. The coffee is processed using the pulped natural method, during which the cherry skin and fruit is removed and the sticky parchment-covered beans are left to dry naturally. The final stage is the removal of the parchment before the coffee is bagged and shipped to the UK. Helcio Carneiro Pinto has been growing and processing coffee at Fazenda Santa Lúcia for some forty years. The farm is part of Grupo Sertão, an organisation set up to help with the family farms. The coffee is now all processed at Helcio’s brother in law’s farm Fazenda IP which has helped Helcio concentrate on the agronomy and his other crops of corn, soya and wheat. Crop diversification will become more and more important over the years in this area as the region’s climate is less predictable and this is starting to have an impact on the quality of the crop and productivity of the trees. The Sertão group of farms is developing their pruning and fertilisation programs to try to mitigate the weather and we will see more diversification as farmers try to spread their risk across different crops. Please see carmocoffees.com.br for more information about CarmoCoffees and photos of the coffee processing.