Fazenda Paraiso Rum Barrel Fully Washed

Jorge Barakat lives in Paradise. He may not have found the true “higher place”, but his farm, Fazenda Paraíso, is a pretty good substitute. Jorge was born in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of Minas Gerais. Though a city boy by birth and civil engineer by trade, Jorge was a coffee farmer at heart. He fell into coffee by chance, but knew from his first crop that he was dedicated to specialty production. That first year, he sold his entire crop to an Italian roaster.  

Like most coffee producers, it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Jorge but he’s faced and overcome each challenge he’s encountered. The most common difficulties Jorge faced were water scarcity and frosts that damage or kill trees. All the while, he’s learning and improving his crop, always striving for higher quality production.

In pursuit of higher quality, Jorge focuses on selective mechanical harvesting. Due to their large size, most Brazilian farms are built and equipped for 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, this 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.  

Jorge combines mechanical harvesting with the specialty production mindset.  

After harvesting, cherry is pulped and fermented. Fermented parchment is washed in clean water to remove remaining mucilage. Parchment is laid to dry on patios. Depending on weather conditions, parchment may be partially dried using mechanical dryers that rigorously control temperature conditions.  

Constantly in search of new and improved tastes, Jorge experimented with rum barrels to add unique flavors to coffee. Once dry, parchment is rested in empty rum barrels. Most rum barrels are made from oak and, like alcohol in oak barrels, resting parchment absorbs some of the sweet, fruity notes from both the residual rum and the oak itself. Oak is also well known for imparting flavors of vanilla, caramel and spice. Once removed from the barrels, parchment is separated by screen size, density and sorted with electronic color sorters before being prepared for exported.