Brazil

There is no other terroir in the world similar to the unique microclimate of Poços de Caldas, which is angled perfectly toward the sun. Poços de Caldas receives sharply divided day and night periods that begin with early morning sun full-on until 4 pm, when the sun suddenly is cut off by passing across the rim of the crater at the top of the mountain, triggering a burst of energy (sugar) conversion into flavor in the beans. The soil is an enriched combination of volcanic minerals and rainforest soil, giving the coffee an abundance of nutrition and minerals. The coffees consist of a variety of unusual Arabica sub-types, including golden-fruited Catuai.

These coffees are sustainably grown, UTZ Certified, and direct-trade. Volcano Coffee Company also practices an innovative reinterpretation of "shade-grown" coffee: instead of interplanting hardwood trees with their coffee (which is of limited usefulness for wildlife due to lack of underbrush and biodiversity), they preserve wide strips of intact rainforest between different planting areas. This lets the coffee get the right amount of sun, protects biodiversity, and provides undisturbed habitat for wildlife.

Volcano Coffee Company is an association of family farms and neighbors who work together to share processing equipment, testing labs, and provide an enriched environment for their workers. Most coffee in Brazil is harvested by machine, a process that replaces workers and damages the trees severely. These machine-reliant farms rely on robust healing by the plants, but it taxes the plants' ability to cope and makes them more susceptible to disease and produce inferior coffee fruit. Volcano Coffee Company is proud to employ some of the region's fastest and best pickers, who are paid well to efficiently harvest the fruit without doing damage to the plants.

There are several independent estate farms in this group that have consistently won prizes in international competitions, producing fine crops such as the Santa Izabel microlot we feature below. This broadens the offerings of the company and enhances their reputation.

Image from the farm during sunset harvest 2014 One of the estates in the co-op that produces this coffee Bourbon Arabica cherries are not red but yellow, unlike most coffee cherries