Coffee news // Relationship coffee in Brazil
In this post, we wanted to focus on our relationship with the Association of Producers, Divinolania and the developments we are so proud to have made during our 5 years working together. Their hard work every year means we have sweet, delicious, chocolatey coffee to roast for you.
As I already mentioned the relationship is in its 5th year. We've already come such a long way together. The first coffee the group produced for us was a blended lot, contributed to by some of the 52 members but we knew the traceability could be better. So, the next year we asked each producer to keep their coffee separately. When we unloaded the fresh arrival each producer's coffee was bagged separately and their name was printed on the bag. Now we could give full credit to the individual farmer (about 9 producers that year). We couldn't have been more excited. All of this coffee made its way into our House Espresso and we felt this new way of working had improved the results we were getting from our brews greatly.
We continued roasting, as we did we noticed that some of the lots were tasting of much better than we expected. So, again we travel back to Divinolandia 6 hours north of Sao Paulo where we had arranged to meet around 20 of the group to discuss this. These meetings are the highlight of our coffee buying calendar. Many of the farmers bring their whole family so the meeting has a festival kind of feel to it. It's such a special time for everyone here and means so much to us too. Seeing the happiness around and welcoming smiles, proud producers knowing you're returning to continue the partnership, it's a special thing.
We discussed what we had found and, together, decided to introduce a 30c premium for these (we agree on the prices for the coffee in USD$). Since then these are the coffees you'll find in our Trust range. Now, with the producers incentivised and fairly rewarded for their produce, we felt that we had a model that was really working and, since that point, the coffee they produce for us has improved year on year.
Our most recent was in September 2019. This year we were particularly impressed by the work of Rodrigo Jose De Avila whos coffee Sitio Painiera is currently available in our Trust range.
We were pretty stoked to be invited to participate in the competition the group holds every harvest. Coffees are submitted, tasters are invited and the judging takes place to see which producer will be awarded the prize of the best coffee in the Valley of the Italians. This area had large Italian immigration from 1900, check out the old poster inviting Italians to Brazil, pretty cool!
This year it was Rodrigo Jose De Avila that took the price and of course, we wanted to bring some of it home. His award-winning lot will be made available later in the year. As for our House Coffee, this will be changing in the coming week. It goes without saying, we're excited to be roasting coffee from this wonderful group again.
Sitio Painiera and Rodgrigo Jose De Avila, this years best coffee winner