Our latest easy drinker Brazil is from Fazenda Aracaçu in Tres Pontas, Minas Gerais. This Acaia variety is processed as a natural and is super sweet and creamy and comes from the third generation producers of the Chaves de Brito family, headed by Carmen Lucia (aka Ucha).

The undulating topography that houses Aracacu y Caxambu estates, the two farms owned by the Chaves de Brito family falls in the transition zone between the Atlantica Forest and Cerrado Biome. The area takes its name from the three peaked mountain in the area which, stretching up to 1234 metres high, has often been used as a landmark. Aracacu itself translates to the ‘big tree that touches the sky’ or ‘tree that connects sky and earth’.

Continually forward facing, the farm has a garden of varieties to observe genetic diversity over 80+ varieties that grow there, including Yellow Maragogipe, Guantenano, and Anao de Guatemala. This is laid out as a mandela, a nod to the spiritual connection Ucha instills across the whole property.

They have transformed the farm fully to solar power, with enough surplus produced to sell some back to the local town, Tres Pontas. This also powers a small café roastery that has grown over the years there, the pandemic providing a great destination for the towns cyclists and the farm willing to meet their curiosity and needs. This has expanded in to partnerships with beer brewers to make coffee flower beers, apiarists that both conduct studies on the local bees impacts amongst the farm and on some areas they are now growing grapes as diversification considering climate change in the area. The farm regularly engages with universities to study a number of subjects involving the coffee growing community too.

Ucha keeps on top of modern trends and frequently is found experimenting in processing. That could be pulping by foot to particular musical rhythms, rehydrating natural coffees before pulping or by researching precursors required in the beans for perfect fermentation in order to provide the exact nourishment. In keeping with the flow of energy across the property, once coffee has been processed it is rested in wooden lined silos common to Brazil and played music to destress the beans. The rooms are also kept dark and cool to aid this. Dry milling is carried out on the farm on a beautiful blue and wood Pinhalense machine from 1976.