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My connection to the coffee-growing "collective" aka FAF (Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza) came through a fellow cellist who was playing at their annual music festival and knew the Croce family from Chicago. This direct trade offering, along with our FAF producer, Vanessa Moreno, is backed by an unusually strong commitment to biosphere preservation and social progressivism. The coffee is exceptional, befitting the commitment of the Croce generations in their own farms and their growing network of small, family-run operations who stand in stark contrast to the megafarms common in much of 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 Croces connected with like-minded growers struggling as well to make farming viable for the next generation, with a strong focus on their immediate ecosystems—the watersheds and canopies that made the land worth living on—as well as quality, as means to economic independence and self-esteem. Over the years the Croce's network of farmers grew. FAF now exports coffee on behalf of 150 small and sustainable farms throughout the Mogiana region, and increasingly, other pockets of 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”.
This particular lot is a micro-blend of 2 farms located in the community of Cerra do Cigano, or “Gypsy Hill”, in the municipality of Caconde, a rolling, mountainous area with steep slopes and abundant natural springs, populated mostly by legacy family homesteads. Sítio Boa Vista is one of the very first farms to join the Croce family in their mission to transform their land, when very few buyers in the world expected specialty coffee from Brazil. The farm is 17 hectares and entirely hand-harvested. It is managed by Gertrudes and her husband Celso, and their son Denner, and includes extended family members to manage the harvest. The second farm, Sítio Joaninha, is run by Valdir José Ferreira, whose grandparents first moved to Caconde 35 years ago. After spending holidays on the farm and learning the lifestyle, he moved to the region himself and established Joaninha, a 7-hectare estate, which is now home to Valdir, his wife Daniela, their two children, and Valdir's parents, all of whom help run the farm. “Joaninha” translates to “ladybug”, named after his mother's experience of watching agro-chemicals destroy the once thriving ladybug population on the farms, killing off the land's natural pest control—the family's mission is to farm regeneratively and bring the ladybugs back. Both farms utilize raised beds for drying naturals, which are constantly rotated and sorted by the families during the drying.
Boa Vista and Joaninha have become evangelists within FAF's network and synonymous with the effort to revive small coffee farms and create a new market for the “other” Brazil: the harder-to-access family plots with high quality potential and an embodiment of community ideals deserving of visibility among specialty roasters.
This is the tastiest single origin espresso we've ever had from Brazil. As a drip, it is creamy and fruit forward...please specify when you order!
