Adolfo Ferreira
Forty Years of Pico Mirante
We've been buying coffee from Adolfo for several years now, and his lots are consistently among the best Brazilian coffees we taste. The quality has always been there, but spending time with him at Pico Mirante, reminded us that consistency like that doesn't happen by chance. After more than 40 years managing Pico Mirante, he's still investing in changes that won't necessarily benefit this year's harvest, but will make the farm stronger for decades to come.
When people think of Brazilian coffee, they picture huge plantations stretching to the horizon with little room for nature. Pico Mirante tells a different story.
The farm covers around 350 hectares, but only part of that is dedicated to coffee. Around 70 hectares remain untouched native forest, while Adolfo has spent the last 15 years planting another 24 hectares of woodland to reconnect fragmented habitats across the farm.
His planting has created wildlife corridors that allow animals to move naturally through the landscape, while the forest itself provides shade, improves water retention, protects soils and supports biodiversity.
Another interesting changes at pico mirante was his harvest equipment. The petrol-powered hand pickers that had been used for years have been replaced by battery-powered machines. They perform the same job (by gently shaking ripe cherries from the branches) but they produce no exhaust fumes and are powered entirely by electricity generated on the farm. Adolfo explained that Pico Mirante now runs entirely on renewable energy produced on-site.
Walking around Pico Mirante, it's obvious that coffee quality is the result of lots of small choices made throughout the year. That attention to detail is one of the reasons Adolfo's coffees keep standing out on our cupping table. They aren't dramatic or showy, but they're consistently clean, sweet and balanced—the kind of coffees that are surprisingly difficult to produce year after year.
After touring Pico Mirante, we cupped the first coffees from this year's harvest alongside Adolfo, our importing partners and Myles from FED. Having the producer, importer, roaster and café tasting together isn't something that happens every day, but to be able to complete the relationship circle was something special.
Looking to the future
The speciality coffee industry loves talking about innovation, sometimes that means new processing methods or experimental fermentations and other times it simply means managing a farm continuously well for forty years.
Adolfo is a producer who's investing in renewable energy, restoring forests, improving ecosystems and refining processes but none of it feels performative, it's just good farming.
