About This Coffee
The Barbosa family has been cultivating coffee since the 1900s, when current owner, Danilo Barbosa’s, great-grandfather, Elias Barbosa purchased the farm. Three generations later, Danilo and his family are as dedicated as ever.
Cultivation
The Topazio in this lot is grown on a 30 hectare plot of land at Fazenda D’barbosa.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
After harvest, cherry is delivered to the farm’s processing center, where it is placed in 200L barrels to ferment anaerobically for 100 hours. Filling and turning the fermentation barrels is a big ordeal, requiring 6 to 12 people to produce a 40 bag lot. Once fermentation is complete, cherry is laid on patios to dry. Cherry is raked frequently to ensure even drying. It takes approximately 12 to 15 days for cherry to dry.
Topazio
Topázio (also Topacio) was bred in Brazil the 1960s by the Agronomic Institute of Campinas (IAC). The variety is a cross between Mundo Novo and Red Catuaí. That offspring is then crossed again with Catuaí. The resulting plant is short with high reproductive capacity and a long lifecycle. Its cherry is yellow with good uniformity.
Coffee in Brazil
Just under 40% of all coffee in the world is produced in Brazil - around 3.7 million metric tons annually. With so much coffee produced, it’s no wonder that the country produces a wide range of qualities. Brazil produces everything from natural Robusta, to the neutral and mild Santos screen 17/18, to the distinctive Rio Minas 17/18. In recent years, Brazilian producers have also begun investing more heavily in specialty coffee production. Through our in-country partners in Brazil, including our sister company, we are able to provide a wide range of Brazilian coffees to our clients: from macrolot to microlot.
Today, the most prolific coffee growing regions of Brazil are Espirito Santo, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Bahia. Most Brazilian coffee is grown on large farms that are built and equipped for maximizing production output through mechanical harvesting and processing. The relatively flat landscape across many of Brazil’s coffee regions combined with high minimum wages has led most farms to opt for this type of mechanical harvesting over selective hand-picking.
In the past, mechanization meant that strip-picking was the norm; however, today’s mechanical harvesters are increasingly sensitive, meaning that farms can harvest only fully ripe cherries at each pass, which is good news for specialty-oriented producers.
In many cases and on less level sections of farms, a mixed form of ‘manual mechanized’ harvesting may be used, where ripe coffee is picked using a derriçadeira – a sort of mechanized rake that uses vibration to harvest ripe cherry. A tarp is spanned between coffee trees to capture the cherry as it falls.
With the aid of these newer, more selective technologies, there’s a growing number of farms who are increasingly concerned with – and able to deliver - cup quality.