In 2001, it won the best coffee in Brazil, with a score of 97.53. To this day, no one has ever repeated this deed
The Special Grain Team returned to the road, this time to visit the Santa Terezinha farm in Paraisópolis, Minas Gerais. Saying that Paulo Sérgio de Almeida, Paulinho, is nice, is a pleonasm. He is a synonymous with happy and hardworking.
Try to get out of there without tasting the orange candy prepared by his wife, or the white cheese made by his brother and you will see what happens! Impossible. But let’s go to the cafes!
The farm is more than 100 years old, it has 90 hectares, of which 20 are devoted to coffee, planted at an average altitude of 1000 meters. The specialty coffees produced here are organic, and the crop is all manual and selective. The varieties are Mundo Novo, Catuaí Vermelho, Catucaí Amarelo and Bourbon Vermelho. “My father abandoned coffee production to take care of only the cattle. I brought the coffee crop back and today we also have pig farming, pitaya, beans, manioc and some cattle”, says proudly. And everything they generate in waste is used in the form of compost.
Because they do manual harvesting, they employ more people than average farms of the same size. There are about 14 permanent employees who increase to 30 at harvest time.
Paulinho explains, completely excited: “we work with natural, peeled, fermented, natural and pulped coffee. The newly harvested coffee goes through the peeling process and is then placed in a suspended and covered terrain, where it remains until complete drying”.
The coffee beans are stored in the bins, where they have 100% traceability and are identified every day with information about what field they are, the day they were harvested, their drying method, which type of grain, separated in mature, ground, buoy, green and green cane, the day it was stored, its humidity level, its batch, anyway.
Paulinho can also make a shaded coffee because of the geography of the place. “Perhaps, the most famous coffee I have here is that of Guatambu (the parcel of land has this name because of the Guatambu tree that exists in the place). It was with this coffee that I won, in 2001, the Cup of Excellence as the best coffee in Brazil, with a score of 97.53. “For several reasons, I did not run for the Cup anymore, but this year the story will be different”. I am very confident in the quality of the coffee and I decided to compete again. I’m anxious”, he says.
Due to the importance of the prize, Paulinho has already been invited to give lectures in several producing countries like Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Costa Rica. He says that he was able to bring several new techniques such as composting and the method of drying the grain to a volcano format.
The choice for the organic special coffee
Paulinho worked for 10 years in a rural extension, in a neighboring town, Pedral, giving consultancy to all type of rural producers. Because of this, he was very active with pesticides aimed at tomato, banana and so on crops. In 1994, he lost a kidney, which the doctor, at the time, attributed to excessive contact with agricultural pesticides. “I only survived thanks to a donation from my brother’s kidney. Because of this, I have never used any poison on the farm, just a little fertilizer”, he says.
Today, the farm sells its specialty organic coffees mainly to Japan and USA. “I am looking forward to the visit of my Japanese buyer who comes to Brazil every year to buy microbatches. Paulinho guarantees: “They see and visit several farms but mine first, every time”. For the friendliness and quality of the special coffees he grows, it is not difficult to know why.
Two years ago, his sons decided to install an artisanal microbrewery, Zalaz, www.zalaz.com.br in a part of the farm. For manufacturing beer, they use various products grown there, including coffee.
