Fazenda Santo Antonio has been owned by the Andressa family since 2016. The coffee trees of Catuai 144 varietal yielding red cherries are therefore still young and have not reached their full height, but they produce excellent coffee. Until 2021, the family was producing commodity coffee although of high quality. In 2021, we shifted the focus from commodity to specialty coffee.

In 2021, the coffee was hand-picked and we then separated by hand ripe cherries from unripe. We dried some of the cherries on so-called African raised beds, while we dried others conventionally on a patio. The difference in the drying method was obvious. The coffee was drying slightly longer on the raised beds, as it was not exposed to the trapped heat of the day, which the patio released overnight. This resulted in a slight natural fermentation that gave the coffee its citrus notes.

We also sent a sample of our coffee dried on African beds to the Florada competition, organised by the popular Brazilian roastery 3 Corações (3 Hearts). The aim of this program is to promote women coffee producers, with sustainable production and care for nature at its core. To date, more than 2500 women growers have taken part in the program. In the 2021 season, our micro lot was ranked among the top 100 in the whole of Brazil.

This early success motivated us to continue producing coffee of high quality.