Brazil FAF Bob-O-Link Reserve – Serra Dos Ciganos – Natural Processed

Description

A high-grown bean from the Serra dos Ciganos mountains of Caconde (São Paulo), this lot comes to us through FAF Coffees, the specialty exporter founded by the Croce family in Brazil’s Mogiana region and one of our oldest and most cherished Brazilian relationships. The Bob-O-Link project, an FAF initiative launched in 2008, was created to transform Brazilian coffee from a mere commodity into a specialty product. The harvest is carried out manually, and the cherries undergo a 100% natural process: after careful selective picking, they are washed and floated to remove damaged and less-dense beans, then gently dried on raised beds and turned periodically to even out moisture and enhance complexity.

Despite the default impression of Brazil as being dominated by large, mechanized farms, still about half of the country’s coffee farmers are small, family-managed operations who process at home and sell 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. FAF Coffees is a specialty exporter 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 a means to economic independence and self-esteem. Over the years the Croce’s network of farmers grew. FAF now exports coffee on behalf of a large network of small and sustainable farms throughout the Mogiana region and beyond, 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 Cigano, or “Gypsy Hill,” in the municipality of Caconde, is a rolling, mountainous area with steep slopes and abundant natural springs, populated mostly by legacy family homesteads. The community has become 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. These Bob-O-Link coffees are far from average Brazil higher cup scores, more diversity in flavor, more traceable, and fresh as can be.

Tasting Notes: A beautiful single-origin Brazil best from medium to dark roasts. Clean, rich and balanced, hints of lemony acidity at the lighter roasts, good body with more traditional Brazilian nuttiness in the cup. Turns a bit more chocolaty and smooth as one pushes the roast into the medium to dark roast level. A nice sweet edge to the cup regardless of roast level. You’ll find notes of toffee, peanuts, citrus, caramel, and a rich semi-sweet chocolate-like tone, with some cool spice notes that come through as you roast it darker.

Roasting Notes: Easy to roast, a little chaff heavy being a natural. Roasts just slightly two-toned. If shooting for those wonderful light roasts, make sure everything is a little through first crack. A longer setup is not necessary, these beans present nicely even 12 hours later. After 4-5 days, loses a bit of the floral/fruity factors but the cup will be richer and smoother.

This coffee was produced as a partnership between two awesome farms. Sítio Boa Vista is one of the very first farms to join the FAF Bob-O-Link 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.