The Brazilian state of Minas Gerais is home to between 50 and 60 percent of all the coffee grown in Brazil in any given harvest cycle and countless farms and regions are world famous for their coffees. But it’s in Matas de Minas, a region long shrouded into a state of oblivion, that growers in recent years have emerged to recognition for quality by the specialty industry. In the third article of our special series on Brazil we travel deep into the little-known mountains of Matas to review the surprising history behind the latest surge in quality from a region that grows more coffee than Guatemala and Mexico combined. This article was first published in the Tea & Coffee Trade Journal in the November 2016 edition.
(c) All photos By Maja Wallengren
By Maja Wallengren
November 2016 (SpillingTheBeans)–Rising against the backdrop of impressive rugged mountains, the coffee farms in Brazil’s Matas de Minas is unlike any other producing region in the world’s largest grower and exporter. And from the midst of the forest-clad mountains, the coffee coming out of the Matas region has in recent years been quick to rise to new-found acclaim.
It’s an impressive transformation the Matas growers have undertaken. In little over 10 years the region has gone from a reputation of producing low-grade coffees used in commercial blends to become a region increasingly sought after for its unique qualities and top-scoring beans in the specialty markets, industry officials agree.
“When we started the Coop in 1979 and all the way up to 2005 as much as 95 percent of the coffee here was lower grades like Rio-qualities but today 85 percent of all our coffees have reached export quality and of those at least 20 percent are exported as top-quality specialty micro lots,” said Pedro Silva Araujo, Production and Marketing director, for the Cooperative of Coffee Growers in the Lajinha Region, or Coocafe. Lajinha is one of the key producing areas in Matas, located in the north-eastern corner of the region on the border with the state of Espirito Santo.
(c) All photos By Maja Wallengren
“Our region is highly unique in Brazil because 95 percent of our 7,000 members are small-holder growers and many of them only have 2 to 3 hectares land per family,” Silva told SpillingTheBeans during a visit to the Coop’s headquarters in Lajinha. Lajinha, Manhuaçu and Laratinga are the three biggest producing regions in Matas and produce about 1.0 million 60-kilogram bags a year combined.
Zona da Mata refers in Portuguese to a forest region and is a sub-region within Minas Gerias state. The Brazilian Agriculture Ministry’s crop supply agency Conab has pegged production in the 2016-17 harvest in Zona da Mata to reach 6.01 million 60-kilogram bags, down 8 percent from the 6.6 million bags harvest in the 2015-16 cycle.
“We are very isolated here, even though all roads in this part of Brazil go through the Matas region from Belo Horizonte, whether you go south to Rio De Janeiro, east to the port of Vitoria in Espirito Santo, or north to Salvador in Bahia,” said Cintia Matos, an agronomist with CooCcoop in Lajinha and herself from a family of small-holder coffee growers. “Some of the biggest challenges here is the infrastructure and the logistics for the growers, because 60 percent of the population in the Matas region depends on coffee for their livelihood so we are constantly trying to find ways to deal with the volatility of the market, how to improve prices and funding, get better infrastructure and create more diversification within the property for the growers,” she said.
(c) All photos By Maja Wallengren
Travelling the 350 kilometers to Lajinha from the state capital of Belo Horizonte the road quickly starts winding its way through steep mountains and big black granite rock formations. The hilly landscape here is more reminiscent to visitors of the kind of mountain slopes that dominate the coffee lands in Central America or Colombia. Dense shade forest is spectacularly adorned by the silver-colored leafs of the Embauba trees native to the Matas region while bright orange, turquois, pink and yellow birds in all shapes and sizes carelessly glides through the air.
“The topography here is such that mechanical harvesting is all but impossible, and when you visit farms even hand picking on some of the slopes seems like a formidable task. But the high altitudes, abundance of flora and fauna, and the cooler temperatures of the region provide a unique micro-climate for some wonderful coffees,” said Joel Schuler, partner in micro-roasters Casa Brasil Coffees in Austin, TX. Casa Brasil has since 2001 specialized in bringing beans from select farms in Brazil to coffee lovers in the U.S.
(c) All photos By Maja Wallengren
It’s a rise from the shadows of past coffee glory in Matas. At the height of production in the 1880s the region accounted for 90 percent of Brazil’s entire annual production and Zona da Mata was the richest in Minas Gerais thanks to coffee and mil production, historical records show. Even as other regions grew in importance the Matas growers held on to a 70 percent production share all the way up to the 1920s before improved infrastructure and better technology closer to Sao Paulo caused the center of large-scale production to drift further south. But where the earlier grandeur was found in volumes and riches, today the Matas coffee glory is all about quality.
“Matas de Minas has really emerged as a new region for specialty coffee and is today producing some of Brazil’s best coffees,” said Schuler, who was one of the pioneers among U.S. roasters to venture into Matas and identify growers to work with when the name of Matas farmers started to appear in cupping awards at the turn of the Millennium. “With the dissemination of information, a better infrastructure, and the adoption of a renewed focus on producing high-quality coffee from the producers the Matas region has shown how the microclimates in the region can result in really complex coffees with delicate notes of citric acidity, sweet caramel and hints of a floral fragrance,” marvels Schuler.
The quality recognition for the Matas region has been a long time coming. As early as the 2nd Cup of Excellence internet auction in Brazil in year 2000 beans from Matas entered among the finalists and Matas farms have been present ever since. The very best of micro lots have scored as high as 95 points on the 100-point scale of evaluation created by the Coffee Quality Institute, a non-profit organization in Long Beach, CA.
“This region always had a lot of quality coffee but over the years the potential was sharply reduced by poor processing methods,” said Sergio Cotrim D’Alessandro. A producer, analyst and consultant he grows coffee at altitudes between 600 and 1,400 meters at his farm Fazenda Bon Sucesso. Named after the Corrego Bonsuccesso river delta the farm is located near the small town of Manhumirim, which means little river or stream in the native Tupi language. Manhumirim is itself located 20 kilometers south of Manhuaçu, which means big river in Tupi. The Tupi tribe was prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in year 1500 the biggest indigenous group in Brazil and remains one of the country’s most important native tribes today.
“In the last few years the majority of our coffees typically score 84 to 85 points and have a sweet cupping profile with a strong body, notes of chocolate, and a very nicely balanced acidity. But as the work on post-harvest processing techniques has evolved we continue to see improvements. In our last crop 10 percent of the coffee scored above 90 points and one micro lot even got 95 points,” Cotrim D’Alessandro told SpillingTheBeans during a visit to the farm.
The origins of the history of the Cotrim-D’Alessandro family goes back two centuries and is one that mirrors many of the human destinies found across the Matas region. The great-grand fathers of the family were descendants of a mix of immigrants from Italy, Germany and Switzerland who all came to Brazil in the early 19th Century to escape the brutality and suffering brought about by the 1803-1815 Napoleonic Wars in Europe.
“They were immigrants who came to Brazil with no money but the dreams for a better life. There was a campaign from the Brazilian emperor to attract Europeans and at first they stayed in Rio where there already was coffee, but then they went further to Matas de Minas and that’s how the coffee culture started spreading,” said Cotrim D’Alessandro’s first cousin, Josiane Cotrim Macieira, herself actively involved with promoting the Matas region.
(c) All photos By Maja Wallengren
While early immigration came to the rugged mountains of Matas lured by the promise of either richness or labor in the gold mines that were dominant in Minas Gerais at the time coffee was quick to follow, according to Brazil historian Peter Blasenheim, a professor at Colorado University in Colorado Springs, CO. Coffee was introduced to the Matas forest lands as “part of the expansion of the coffee frontier” and reached Manhuaçu in 1809, said Blasenheim in his book “A Regional History of the Zona Da Mata in Minas Gerais, Brazil.”
The first discussions on quality in Matas started back in the mid-1990s when the late Italian coffee connoisseur Ernesto Illy visited the region. One of the benefits that Dr Illy pointed out, according to local officials, is the unique potential for quality found in Matas thanks to a production structure dominated by small-grower families. Such a structure allows for growers to focus, naturally, on a more artisanal approach toward coffee farming.
“Small farmers are a really important characteristic for the Matas region. The whole family is involved from the husband, the wife and the children and everything is done by hand,” said CooCoop’s Cintia Matas. Talking about a family-based structure in coffee is equivalent to talking about the powerful presence of women, and in a parallel growth curve to the Matas coffees starting to reach the top-charts of quality in recent years has been the rise of the Matas women in coffee.
“We have always had a very strong focus on women in the cooperative and include them in the Coop in everything from the meetings to the decision making. Every year we have special events for women and a few years back we started creating women nucleuses across the region in order to further promote the work we are doing and the opportunities that come from producing quality coffee,” she Cintia, adding: “The women are so dynamic and excited to see the progress and it’s been very cool to start this work with other women here in the region based on the direct approach from women empowerment through coffee.”
From technical assistance for growers and cupping courses, to environmental education about topics such as garbage collection and a vegetable school for diversification and additional income generation, the Matas women have now embarked on roasting their own coffee both for their own families and for sale in the local market. Results have been exciting, said Julenia Lopes, who runs her small farm Boa Sorte together with her husband Helmut in the Matas municipality of Carangola.
(c) All photos By Maja Wallengren
The excitement that greets visitors from every branch of the Matas coffee sector is infectious and meeting with the growers it’s easy to understand how that excitement has extended across to the specialty industry. As the Matas farmers continue their work on quality hopes are high that the flow of top-grade beans will continue to increase. Lopes, who is also on the board of directors at the Brazil chapter of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance, said this is already happening.
“Look at this, isn’t it beautiful,” she says and points to a tiny batch of perfectly picked red coffee cherries collected in a separate lot on a raised drying bed in the sun. “It’s only two years ago we did our first experiments with select micro lots and already this year we see so many of the growers interested in participating,” she said. The world of coffee can’t wait to see how the fascinating story of the Matas growers continues to evolve.
Maja Wallengren has been writing about coffee for more than 30 years and has specialized in coffee during her travels as a reporter to over 2000 farms spread out on close to 70 coffee producing countries across Southeast Asia, East and West Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America. She may be reached at: mwallengren@outlook.com.
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My name is Maja and I’m a Danish born woman crazy beyond passionate about everything coffee. I have written about all aspects of coffee for over 25 years from 60 coffee producing countries across the world.
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