CEASELESS PENANCE, Brazil

Black Forest, Brown Sugar, Candied Orange

Fazenda Santa Mônica sits in the Alta Mogiana, spread across the municipalities of Ibiraci, Cássia and Capetinga at 1,240 metres. It is high plateau country, and among the more elevated coffee land in Brazil.

Jean Vilhena Faleiros runs the farm with a clear focus on the upper grades, and has built the infrastructure to match: dedicated dryers reserved for micro lots, and six thousand square metres of raised beds set aside for the coffees that warrant that level of care.

This lot is a yeast anaerobic natural. Whole cherry is sealed into barrels and fermented with a selected strain of yeast, an oxygen-starved process that drives a deep, winey weight into the fruit before it is dried whole.

The varietal is Maragogipe, a giant-seeded natural mutation of Typica first found in Brazil. Low yielding and uncommon, it carries a soft, rounded sweetness that suits this style of ferment.