Coffee from the mountains of ES stands out with fruity flavors – 08/15/2023 – Café na Prensa

Small farms, highly selective harvesting and artisanal processing. This is how the Espírito Santo mountain region has stood out in the disputed Brazilian market for quality coffee, a sector dominated by states such as São Paulo and Minas Gerais.

Grains from the mountains of Espírito Santo produce drinks of high sensory complexity, which is due, in large part, to the geoclimatic conditions of the region. As a fruit, coffee has flavors that vary according to the characteristics of the place where it is grown. It is the terroir, much talked about in the wine world.

Just as a wine has different notes if it is produced from grapes grown in different regions, coffee also has different flavors depending on the variety and characteristics of the soil and climate.

And it is precisely the terroir one of the factors responsible for the quality of the coffee produced in the mountains of Espírito Santo, as explained by Lucas Louzada, doctor in production engineering with a focus on agroecological production and professor at Ifes (Federal Institute of Espírito Santo).

The thing is that, unlike the main coffee producing regions in Brazil, especially in Minas and São Paulo, the mountains of Espírito Santo are very close to the sea – they are about 50 km from Vitória.

“We are very close to the ocean. So we end up receiving a higher and faster moisture load than other coffee producing regions. And, consequently, the combination of microclimatic factors, such as topography, altitude, solar radiation, relative humidity , all this adds up to the social and productive aspects”, explains Louzada.

When he talks about social aspects, the researcher is referring above all to the agricultural production system in the region, with a predominance of tiny properties and the cultivation of various plants in addition to coffee.

Farmer Edmar Busato, for example, has a 10-hectare property (each hectare has 10,000 m²) in Marechal Floriano. He works with the help of his family and, sometimes, a collaborator at harvest time. In this system, he can produce up to 60 bags per harvest – each bag has 60 kg of green coffee beans, that is, before they are roasted.

The family farming system is repeated in several producers who coffee in the press visited.

On all properties, harvesting is done manually and highly selectively. It works like this: the producer passes the coffee tree and picks only the fruits that are at the ideal maturation point, leaving the greener ones to harvest later. Per season, these small producers spend about five times on the same tree.

The smaller the property, the more selective the harvest can be. Vagner Uliana, who has a micro-cultivation of just 1 hectare in Domingos Martins, passes up to 15 times on the same foot. Perfectionism bore fruit: last year, the producer took third place in the Coffee of The Year award, which recognizes the main highlights of the Brazilian crop.

The artisanal process of producers in the mountains of Espírito Santo extends to post-harvest. Once removed from the tree, the fruits are left to dry in terraces for at least 15 days. Ezio Sartori, who cultivates an area of ​​12 hectares in the municipality of Castelo, says that, to avoid accumulation of moisture, he and his family turn over the grains that are on the yard more than ten times a day.

To understand exactly each of the stages that coffee goes through from the moment it is cultivated until it reaches the cup, check out the image gallery below.

All this, combined with the region’s geoclimatic conditions, results in complex drinks, explains Louzada. “Coffees with notes of lemon, rapadura, brown sugar. They are very complex coffees due to these very unique microclimatic conditions”, she says.

These singularities meant that, in 2021, coffee from the mountains of Espírito Santo was recognized by the INPI (National Institute of Industrial Property) as a product with a designation of origin – a seal that designates a product whose qualities are due to the geographical environment, such as what occurs in Europe with sparkling wine from the Champagne region, in France, or Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, in Italy.

The designation of origin of coffee from the mountains of ES encompasses the municipalities of Afonso Claudio, Alfredo Chaves, Brejetuba, Castelo, Conceição do Castelo, Domingos Martins, Iconha, Itaguaçu, Itarana, Marechal Floriano, Rio Novo do Sul, Santa Maria de Jetibá, Santa Leopoldina, Santa Teresa, Vargem Alta and Venda Nova do Imigrante.

In terms of volume, the mountains of Espírito Santo do not compare to the productivity of other regions, such as the mining areas, where there are much larger farms with more sophisticated structures.

The mountains of Espírito Santo produce 1.40 million bags of Arabica coffee per year, according to Incaper (Capixaba Institute for Research, Technical Assistance and Rural Extension), a much lower value than the main mining regions, such as the South and Midwest Minas (9.6 million) and Zona da Mata, Rio Doce and Central (7.1 million), according to Conab (National Supply Company).

But it is for their quality –exotic and fruity– that the beans have attracted the attention of specialists in Brazil and around the world. In São Paulo, the renowned coffee shop Coffee Lab has been serving coffee from the region for over a decade.

Two of the most valued coffee areas in the world are Central America, where small producers predominate, and East Africa, such as Kenya and Ethiopia, which produce very fruity and complex coffees.

Barista Isabela Raposeiras, from Coffee Lab, defines the mountains of Espírito Santo as follows: “It is our Central America, in terms of production, and our Africa, in terms of flavor”.

But it was not always so. The next article in the Mountains of Espírito Santo series will show how a virtually ignored region has become the darling of wine tasters in less than a decade.

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