Sul de Minas is part of what some call the “other” Brazil: a more mountainous region with smaller, more specialized farms. This tangy, creamy, and floral lot of coffee comes from a group of producers northwest of the town of Andradas, right on the border between Minas Gerais and São Paulo states. Unlike the vast, mechanized estates that dominate Brazil’s coffee imagery, these are family-managed farms with far less mechanization than most, concentrated on environmental health and a high specialty mindset for quality.
Sul de Minas
The Sul de Minas region of Brazil is a small designation of coffee origin in the southwestern corner of the massive Minas Gerais state. The majority of Minas Gerais is a relatively serene, tropical savannah with ideal terrain for high-volume, mechanized coffee production. (Minas Gerais itself produces half of Brazil’s coffee, about a quarter of the world’s). In Sul de Minas, however, the landscape tends to be dense and steep, cut with deep river valleys and high ridgelines. Coffee farms here reach over 1300 meters, considered quite high and challenging for arabica in such southern latitudes.
While it’s true that 500+ hectare estates dominate Brazil’s production, still about half of the country’s coffee farmers have small, family-managed operations, processing at home and selling to local growers’ organizations to earn their living. Smaller farms tend to be clustered in the more difficult landscapes for coffee efficiency—the ones that are steep and forested, difficult to access, or at higher elevations where the climate is more challenging for coffee to thrive. Sul de Minas, like its neighboring Mogiana region, is one such area.
FAF Coffees and the “Other” Brazil
FAF Coffees is a specialty exporter in Brazil founded by the Croce family. During their years spent struggling to revive the soils of their own family farm in the Mogiana region, the Croce family connected with like-minded small growers struggling as well to make farming viable for the next generation. Over time, the Croce family estate, “Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza” (Environmental Fortress Farm), started sharing their approach to land management, and exporting other producers’ coffees to buyers they had come to know.
Farmers working with FAF have a strong focus on their immediate ecosystems—the watersheds and canopies that made the land worth living on—as well as quality in the cup, as a means to economic independence and self-esteem. Over the years the Croce family's network of farmers grew. FAF now exports coffee on behalf of more than 250 small and sustainable farms throughout the Mogiana, Sul de Minas, and Caparaó regions. In all places they have mobilized entrepreneurial small growers dedicated to the same combination of cup quality, environmental health, and community strength, exuberantly referred to in the FAF network as “total quality”.
Serra do Caracol
Serra do Caracol (“Snail Mountain”) is a local natural landmark outside the village of Andradas. The landmark is part of a long ridgeline that runs right along the border between Minas Gerais and São Paulo states. This coffee is a blend of 100% Arara cultivars from multiple producers in this area, processed centrally as a raised-bed, sundried natural.
Red catuaí, though produced prolifically throughout the Americas, is originally a Brazilian cultivar. Red catuaí is a cross between Brazil’s own mundo novo (itself a cross between bourbon and typica) and caturra (a dwarf mutation of bourbon). It was first created in 1949, and has been in production throughout the country since the 1970s.
