The Sertãozinho Group has consistently established itself as the go-to Brazilian specialty coffee producer with a collection of estates where focus on farm management and processing is unmatched. Much of the credit goes to the leadership of José Renato Gonçalves Dias who draws his passion for coffee all the way back to his great grandparents who established many of the estates in the Sertãozinho Group. As a trained agronomist, Jose has matched his inherited passion with academic knowledge focused on creating biodiverse environments full of microorganisms and beneficial insects that support a healthy coffee crop. The results are indisputable as coffees from the Sertãozinho Group have frequently been selected as one of the top coffees in the Cup of the Excellence competition in Brazil. This particular lot comes from the Fazenda Sertãozinho, with nearly 6000 acres located in the Sul de Minas region within the state of Minas Gerais. Much of Fazenda Sertãozinho is preserved land, with less than 1500 acres in use for coffee production. During the harvest, coffee is processed using a state-of-the-art facility with certifications in quality management from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). For this pulped natural process, cherries are floated to remove less dense and damaged coffee, and then depulped and placed on patios to dry with the mucilage still attached. After 3 days, the coffee is moved to mechanical driers to precisely finish the drying to 11 percent moisture and then carefully stored until it is time for milling and export.
