Brazil Capim Branco Estate | Brazilian Coffee Estate Introduction | Brazilian Coffee Brands

Fazenda Capim Branco

Overall Evaluation

This coffee is very clean, refreshing and bright, much like a washed coffee. Fazenda Capim Branco was one of the award-winning farms in the 2016 Cup of Excellence Brazil "Natural" competition.

General Information

Variety: Yellow Catuai

Processing: Natural

Crop Year: 2016

Sensory Information

Cupping Score: 86

Flavor Notes: Strawberry, toast, chocolate

Dry Aroma: Nuts, mild fruit/strawberry

Wet Aroma: Chocolate, caramel, mild fruit, sugar

Taste: Chocolate, apple-like fruit, sweet, clean, mild acidity

Bean Size: 16+

Farm Information

Planting Area: 300 hectares

Number of Trees: 1.5 million

Variety: Yellow Catuaí

Altitude: 1,150 meters

Meaning of Capim Branco: "White Grass" — when the plants of the region flower, the whole landscape of trees turns white

Farm Owner: Eduardo Andrade

Harvest Time: Late May to August

Distance from Belo Horizonte: 376 kilometers. Nearest farm town: Carmo do Paranaíba

Number of Workers During Harvest: 25

Fazenda Capim Branco

Fazenda Capim Branco is one of the oldest coffee estates in Brazil, its history reaching back to 1901.

Great coffee begins with the producer, and Eduardo Andrade's family has spent generations refining its methods to grow the highest-quality coffee. Fazenda Capim Branco has belonged to the Andrade family since 1901 and is one of Brazil's oldest specialty coffee farms. It lies in the Cerrado Mineiro region of northern Minas Gerais, near Carmo de Paranaiba. This was Brazil's first coffee-producing region to earn a designation of origin, on a par with famous wine regions.

Cerrado Mineiro sits at an altitude of 1,100 to 1,250 meters and offers near-ideal conditions for coffee, thanks to a fine balance between the dry and wet seasons. The soil at Fazenda Capim Branco is volcanic, and most of the farm is planted with Yellow Catuaí, which thrives in this setting. Careful management of the kind the Andrade family practices keeps flowering and ripening relatively uniform, creating good conditions for the natural process: ripe cherries are dried on patios, producing a sweet, fruity coffee. Once the beans reach the target moisture, they are dry-milled to remove the dried fruit pulp and parchment, then sorted and screened for export.

Combine the region's natural conditions, meticulous crop management, forward-looking planning and careful post-harvest work, and the coffee from the Andrade family farms is high-quality, award-winning and appreciated worldwide.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Brazil is the world's largest coffee producer, and its beans — moderate in acidity and well balanced between sweetness, bitterness and body — respond beautifully to a medium roast that coaxes out a nutty aroma. The FrontStreet Brazil Cerrado Red Bourbon, a classic single-origin red Bourbon from the well-regarded Cerrado region, is a gentle introduction to the country: creamy peanut, toast, caramel and hazelnut, with a rounded, low-acid cup and a light bitter edge. It works equally well as pour-over or in a moka pot, as an espresso SOE, in a siphon or in a French press.

For a rarer varietal, the FrontStreet Brazil Queen's Manor comes from Mogiana near southern Minas, where fertile red volcanic soil feeds the fruit. This yellow Bourbon — a red Bourbon mutation with a cleaner fruit character — shows a sugar-cane sweetness other regions seldom match, alongside fruit and chocolate, whether brewed as pour-over, in a moka pot or on a home espresso machine.

Brazil also anchors FrontStreet Coffee's espresso blends, since its low acidity, balance and friendly price make it the base of many recipes. The oil-rich FrontStreet Classic Blend, the nut-forward FrontStreet Premium Blend and the balanced FrontStreet Black Cocoa Blend favored by many baristas all rely on Brazilian coffee for their chocolate and cream notes, their soft sweet-sour-bitter profile, and the balance that keeps extraction steady.