In the middle of July I had the opportunity to take part in 10-day trip to Brazil with 10 other amazing coffee professionals and a filmmaker compliments of Café Imports. Café Imports is a specialty coffee importer based out of St. Paul, MN that we’ve been doing work with since opening at MadCap to help us offer brilliant coffees from around the world. This past year Café Imports generously committed to send all six of the US Regional Champions, the US Barista Champion and the World Barista Champion on an origin trip for the next three years. Having won the North Central Barista Competition back in March I was fortunate enough to be part of the 1st trip joining Sam Purvis from Coavo Coffee in Portland, OR; Michael Harwood from Carrboro Coffee Roasters in Carrboro, NC; Pete Licata from Honolulu Coffee Co. in Hawai (who won both the Southwest and USBC), Joe Moracco of Kaldi’s Coffee in St. Louis, MO; Phillip Search of Dallis Bros. in New York, NY and the World Barista Champion Alejandro Mendez from Viva Espresso in San Salvador, El Salvador. The group was joined by hosts Tim Chapdelaine and Noah Namowicz of Café Imports; Reg Barber the infamous tamper maker of Reg Barber Tampers; Gianni Cassatini the face of Nuova Simonelli at barista events over the past few years; Sarah Allen of Barista Magazine who wrote a wonderful piece on this trip in the August/September issue of BM; and last but not least Noah’s brother Jake Szymanski of Funny or Die, the lone non-coffee profession who gifted us with his camera work where you can find incredible videos from the trip here.

Brazil Trip – photo by Cafe Imports

Brazil is unlike your average coffee growing country. For one, it’s the largest coffee producer in the world (not to mention the 5th largest country in the world). Secondly, economically it is a very established country with access to a lot of resources. I was most impressed with innovation on the processing level both at the wet mill and dry mills. The calibration and ability to dial in de-pulpers was quite impressive, while the science and skill was even furthered at the dry mill…in laymen’s terms this basically means limiting the amount of defected coffee makes it into cup, allowing for a coffee to be clean, sweet and flavorful. Furthermore, it was great to be surrounded by so many great minds in the industry. All of the champions, including myself had spent at origin time in other coffee growing countries bringing a lot of insight and perspective to the group.

A brief summary of the trip looks like this: The first half of our trip took place in Bahia. Agricafe accompanied us for this part of the trip led by the hospitable Silvio Leite and Fernado Oliveira. It all began at a cupping lab in Salvador tasting coffee all day ranging from a defect table (to learn about defects in coffee), to good 85pt scoring coffee, to a table the blew us away. Agricafe focuses their efforts in a small area of Brazil working with producers to deliver some of the finest coffees coming out of the country. Two days into the trip we would all get a lot closer to one another as we went on a near 20 hour round trip expedition over the next 3 days visiting different farms varying from small to gigantic, to ok quality to outstanding. For the second half of the trip we flew down to Sao Paulo, then travel north a bit to the Minas Gerias state where we stayed in Pocos de Caldas, a quaint city surrounded by some of the richest coffee farms in the country. This part of the trip we had a bit less driving as the distance to farms we visited we not near the haul as we experienced in Bahia. Again, we got the chance to see so many different types of farms from a family of 3 running a farm to farms operating with hundreds of employees. On this lag of the trip we were hosted by Bourbon Specialty, which operates very similarly to our host Agricafe that took care of us in Bahia. Both companies work very closely with the producers to help create a better product while partnering with importers and roasters from around the world to maintain a top notch and transparent coffee.

Brazil Group – photo by Cafe Imports

As it would take me hours to highlight everything we did and everything that was awesome, I’m rather going to sum up with 2 of my favorite experiences. The 1st was in Piata, a very small growing region in Bahia on the first lag of the trip. Piata makes up less than 1% of the specialty coffee grown in Brazil, however over the past few years keeps showing up on the map and winning awards of some of the countries very best coffee. I first learned about Piata a couple years ago when we had Fazenda Sao Judas Tadeu, a coffee that we purchased through Café Imports. I feel in love with this coffee and later watched the producer, Antonio Rigno win award after award for his excellent quality coffee. In my opinion, as roaster and barista, meeting a producer whose coffee you love is one of the most exciting experiences you can have. For me, the producers are the true hero’s, so when you get to meet the one who orchestrated the work long before the green arrives to your doorstep, it is an honor. I got the chance to meet him, drink and eat with him see his farm, see his precise pulped natural process, go to his wife’s café in the town and then hear about his legacy from others and his impact in the Piata growing region.

Larissa & Antonio patio: Piata – photo by Cafe Imports

A second highlight took place on the second part of our trip when we visited Fazenda Sitio Boa Vista in Divanolandia of Pocos de Caldas. Here I was able to see true family farm operations. Not just a farm owned by a family, but completely ran by a family; from the planning, picking, pruning, processing, you name it…it was all family, a husband and wife and a couple of kids doing all the work. And furthermore, these families did their work with such care and such pride and although they were not producing big quantities they were producing qualities that roasters like us are happy to pay significantly more for. We saw farmers living well, in their comfortable (yet not extravagant) homes. At these farms we were invited in for coffee and snacks and were treated like family for the brief time of our visit. It was incredible.

Ryan, Gianni, & Pete – photo by Cafe Imports

That’s all for this trip. Til next time, I just want to give another special thanks to the sponsors Café Imports and to Agricafe and Bourbon Specialty Coffee that took such great care of us while we were down there.