With each iteration of Article, we aim to compose a coffee that has great balance, packed with classic coffee characteristics whilst retaining a sweet, clean finish.
For filter brewing we recommended using 70g of coffee per litre of water. For espresso brewing we recommend a dose of 18g pulled to 36g in 30 seconds. This coffee balances very well with milk.
Article 1 – Saravá, Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, Brazil
This season we cupped lots of samples from Brazil to ensure we found the right coffee to use across our house blends. Our preference has always been for coffees that are clean and sweet that taste fresh and vibrant. The same goes when we source our Brazil coffees, where we seek out lots that have a creamy body, fresh but mellow acidity and bags of brown sugar and milk chocolate sweetness. This season we have sourced a field blend of Mundo Novo & Catuaí cultivars, produced by a community of smallhold farmers in Chapada Diamantina. Typically, we have bought from large landowners with sprawling estates, but through Ofi sourcing we have been able to collate the work of several farmers who tend to coffee on around 20 hectares, whilst supporting a tree planting program in the community to promote biodiversity, increase shade coverage on the farms and facilitate carbon capture.
The Producers & Their Approach:
Around 30 families are ultimately responsible for growing the coffee cherries that have made their way into this community lot, named ‘Saravá’ which loosely translates to “Respect” or “Blessing”. The cultivars are Mundo Novo and Catuaí. The farms span from 900 to 1,300 metres above sea level. Joel Marques de Oliveira is one producer, whose farm Rio Brilhante is in the locale of Ibicoara. He has been motivated to pursue specialty coffee production having won awards for cup quality in 2019. Another producer is Nilson Aguiar Ferreira, who grows coffee on Fazenda Encanto up to 1,100 metres. He learnt the ropes of coffee production from his parents and has been working here since 1997.
We predominantly buy washed coffees, as we love their clarity, vibrancy and clean taste. In Brazil it is highly unusual to see any fully washed lots, with ‘pulped natural’ or honey processing more the norm and ‘natural’ or dry process also common. With our Saravá blend the harvested cherries are initially depulped and put through a demucilaginator or ‘mechanical washer’ which removes the fruit mucilage, bypassing the need for fermentation and decreasing the water requirements. The parchment is then slowly dried with a minor amount of residual mucilage present.
Offering a clean, soft cup with tonnes of sweetness and a creamy body we have been enjoying sample roasts and initial tests of this lot drunk as a single origin, which tastes round and warming. The cup profile is quite versatile and so it lends itself well to blending with other coffees that offer a little more in the way of top notes, acidity and aromatics.
The Cultivars:
Mundo Novo represents a natural cross between Typica and Bourbon that was initially noted in Brazil in the 1940s. Over the subsequent decades, breeding programs in Brazil have made refinements and selections to this tall tree, which offers a good yield and cup quality but is susceptible to leaf rust and coffee berry disease. Mundo Novo has since been cross-bred with Caturra, which itself is a dwarf mutation of Bourbon, to create Catuaí. It’s compact nature allows a denser planting, and the tree itself is quite productive. Catuaí has been far more popular in terms of spreading to other producing countries, Costa Rica in particular.
Article 2 – La Magdalena, Pitalito, Colombia
We have worked in Huila for over a decade, and in our experience the cup profiles of top lots from this region really chime with our preferences.
The Producers
We are currently featuring coffee from 5 farmers who contribute to the La Magdalena community marque. The majority of this high quality community lot has been produced by Alexander Hernandez at Finca La Esmeralda and Willyan Zambrano at Finca La Montañita, with small contributions from Luis Anacona, Horacio Bolaños and Yobani Joven. The contributing members all grow their coffee in the municipality of Pitalito in Huila, which is one of our all-time favourite regions of Colombia. Dotted on their various coffee farms are shade trees including Cachingo, Guamo (Ice-cream Bean), Carbonero and various citrus and avocado trees. The farms range from just 1 up to 5 hectares in size, and are planted out with a combination of Caturra, Castillo and Variedad Colombia, spanning from around 1,700 all the way up to 2,100 metres above sea level. Alexander Toledo and Willyan Zambrano also have a diverse portfolio including Geshas, Bourbon Ají and other exotic varieties that are typically separated into microlots.
Fertile soils with volcanic ash deposits coupled with the high altitudes, quality varieties and agronomical training and support from Caravela all lead to a group of coffee growers who are reliably producing clean, sweet lots that we feel make for very juicy, complex espresso. Each farmer may practice variations on fermentation, size of batches and for different periods, so we can’t be hugely specific with any fermentation details here. Some of them then use raised beds in a polytunnel to dry their coffee, whilst others use their rooftop patios which can be shaded from the sun or sheltered from the rain by sliding a corrugated iron cover over the drying coffee.
The Exporter
Typically, Caravela operate an 80/20 model, working with a vast majority of smallholders and a minority of farmers with large coffee estates. In their latest impact report 87% of their producing partners had farms of less than 5 hectares in size. More than half of the producers they worked with were visited by their PECA team, and in Colombia alone they are working with 1,746 producers across 52 communities.
As regards their PECA program, they have said the below:
“Coffee growers are the heart of our business model,
without them we could not maintain and sustain this value chain. They are responsible for producing the best coffees that delight us every day. The Coffee Growers Education Program (PECA) has developed a symbiotic relationship between coffee growers and Caravela since we’re always learning from each other. For many years, we have accumulated experiences throughout
experimentation and work that provides tools to empower and educates coffee growers, resulting in consistent high-quality coffees.”
