Osmar Nunes

The story of Fazenda Freitas starts with Osmar Pereira Nunes, a cattle farmer native to the Cerrado Mineiro region. Like many of the early harvest lots we have released so far this year, Fazenda Freitas is located close to the city of Patrocinio in the southern part of Cerrado. The farm started as a cattle farm, but during the 80’s Cerrado and the wider Minas Gerais region became a centre for high quality and intensive coffee production, so Osmar’s son Osmar Junior, better known as Juninho, decided to plant coffee there. They started with a 10 hectare test plot, but quickly realised that the terroir was ideal for the production of high quality coffees. A revolution in Brazilian coffee production has happened over the intervening years, with mechanical picking, sorting and processing increasing both efficiency and quality of production, alongside a global uptick in high quality coffee consumption. The Nunes family have therefore been able to expand their business, adding two more coffee farms, Chapadão and Bom Jardin, to their portfolio.

The farms are now run by Juninho and the third generation of the family, his son Gabriel. Gabriel is a student of agronomy at the renowned University of Viçosa, so has been able to innovate within the family business ever further. He has put in place more appropriate and strict fertilisation routines for each varietal on each farm, and has begun to experiment in processing. The family invested in a Q-processing course for Gabriel, so he can bring the latest developments in processing to the wider staff on the three farms. Each farm has been investing heavily in infrastructure, including new fermentation tanks and african raised beds, and in staff training. All of this pays off in the cup, a lot of Yellow Bourbon from Bom Jardin won the 2017 Brazil Pulped Naturals Cup of Excellence with a score of 92.3.

The low altitude of the farm means that careful processing is very important in order to create a more characterful and expressive cup. This has obviously been accomplished here, with Gabriel’s expertise shining through clearly. A clean and ripe strawberry note is backed up by creamy milk chocolate, almost reminiscent of a neapolitan ice cream, followed by a long and sweet roasted hazelnut finish.

Cerrado Mineiro

The region of Cerrado Mineiro is part of the state of Minas Gerais in southeastern Brazil. In 2013 the region became the first in Brazil to be granted a protected designation of origin certificate, similar to Champagne or Scotch whisky. To qualify for the title ‘Cerrado’, the coffees must be speciality grade (80+) and grown above 800 masl in the Cerrado Mineiro region. The 4500 producers of the Cerrado region produce 6 million bags of coffee a year, from 210,000 hectares of coffee growing lands. Most of the lands here are of quite low altitude compared to most of the coffee we buy here at La Cabra, and are more flat, rather than on mountainous terrain. The region has characteristic and distinct seasons, with a wet warm summer, and a dry winter, leading to more consistency in growing conditions between years. The dry climate during harvest means less issues with drying coffees, part of the reason so many high quality naturals are produced here.

About La Cabra

A focus on raw material

If we don’t feel that a coffee suits our style or what we like to present, we simply won’t buy it. Sometimes this leads to issues in green buying; we have to pay very close attention, to a level of green quality that will support this approach, and to how this will develop over the life of a coffee. We are required to focus heavily on the freshness of coffee, both green and roasted, to avoid introducing taints into our cups. We always use clean and fresh water, of an ideal mineral content to present the coffee in its best possible light. Once we have the correct roasting profile, water, and coffee age, the act of brewing is much more simple. A wide variance in brewing parameters can still produce delicious and transparent cups. It is also important to note that this is not always the most consistent approach. The coffee is laid completely bare, so any flaw with the raw material is clearly on show. We could often develop some coffees slightly more, to make them more approachable or easy to work with, but wavering from our philosophy like this would compromise our commitment to complete transparency in coffee.